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THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



A DISCOURSE. 



DELIVERED IN THE 



.Tune 1, 180r,. 



ON THE DAY APPOINTED AS A DAY OF "HUMILIATION AND 

MOURNING" IN VIEW OF THE DEATH OF THE 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 



BY ALBERT BARNES. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

HENRY B. ASJIMEAD, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, 

Nos. 1102 and 1104 Sansom Street. 

1&65. 



(OF a; 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



A DISCOUKSE, 



DELIVERED IN THE 



vmmmm 



June %, 1SGB. 



ON THE DAY APPOINTED AS A DAY OF "HUMILIATION AND 

MOURNING" IN VIEW OF THE DEATH OF THE 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 



BY ALBERT BARNES. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

HENRY B. ASIIMEAD, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, 

Nos. 1102 and 1104 Sanson Street. 

18G5. 



&: 






This discourse was too long to be preached, and in fact a consider- 
able portion of it was omitted in the delivery. Yet it was intended, 
in its preparation, that the views presented should be closely con- 
nected, and that each part should bear on the same general subject. 
It is, therefore, printed. 

I cannot hope, and I do not expect, that the views presented will 
meet with universal approval, or even general approval, but I regard 
them as vital to liberty ; to the proper interpretation of the Constitu- 
tion; and to the future peace and prosperity of the country. Some 
of the sentiments expressed in the Discourse, if they had been uttered 
during the efforts made by the Government and the country to sup- 
press the rebellion, might, perhaps, have been construed as designed 
to embarrass the Government, but, whether correct or not, no such 
construction could be put on them now. Great and valuable lessons 
are to come out of this terrible conflict of arms, and the occasion on 
which this Discourse was delivered seemed to me to be one in which 
it was proper to advert to these lessons. I have exercised the right 
which every man has, of expressing them. 

Albert Barnes. 

Philadelphia, June 2, 1865. 



Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer, I am the Lord that maketh all things ; 

THAT STRETCHETH FORTH THE HEAVENS ALONE J THAT SPREADETH ABROAD 
TnE EARTH BY MYSELF ; THAT FRUSTRATETH THE TOKENS OF THE LIARS, AND 
MAKETH DIVINERS MAD J THAT TURNETH WISE MEN BACKWARD, AND MAKETH 
THEIR KNOWLEDGE FOOLISH J THAT SAITH OF CYRUS, He IS MY SHEPHERD, AND 
SHALL PERFORM ALL MY PLEASURE : EVEN SAYING TO JERUSALEM, THOU SHALT 
BE BUILT ; AND TO THE TEMPLE, THY FOUNDATION SHALL BE LAID. — Isaiah 

xliv. 24, 25, 28. 

The only use which I shall make of this text on this 
occasion, is as suggesting the idea that God raises up 
good and great men, and employs them as instruments 
in delivering the oppressed from bondage, and that, in 
doing this, he defeats the counsels and purposes of bad 
men. Cyrus was raised up to deliver the Hebrew peo- 
ple from their long captivity in Babylon, as Moses had 
been long before to deliver the ancestors of the same 
people from slavery in Egypt. The applicability of 
this thought to the circumstances of our country, I 
trust you will perceive as we advance. If the principle 
is correct, the hand of God should be recognized alike in 
the arrangements by which such men are raised up; in the 
work which they accomplish ; in their removal, however 
that removal may occur ; and in the lasting benefits 
which he has conferred, through their instrumentality, 
on the oppressed, on a nation, or on the world at large. 

In view of profound grief such as a nation never be- 
fore experienced for the loss of a Chief Magistrate ; of 
deep horror felt for the crime by which he has been 
removed — a crime, in itself, among the darkest that man 



6 

ever commits, and in this case, aggravated the more its 
origin, and the purposes expected to be accomplished by 
it, and the spirit which prompted it, are understood — we 
have been summoned to the services of this day. No 
words can add to our sense of the loss, or our horror of 
the crime. The nation's sense of that loss has been ex- 
pressed in tears, and prayers, and costly arrangements 
for committing to the earth, in a proper manner, all that 
was mortal of the murdered man, such as the world 
never saw on the fall of the Ruler of a people before, 
and the nation's horror of the crime by all the demands 
which a nation could utter for the severest punishment 
of those directly concerned in the assassination, and of 
all those in high places who have been connected with 
it. It is not for me to attempt to deepen this impression 
of loss, or to give a more distinct utterance to this feel- 
ing of horror. The deed is done. The work of the 
President is done. His character is fixed — unmistaka- 
bly fixed, and honorable ; his name will go down to future 
times as among the most cherished of those of our own 
country, or of any land, whose record the " world will not 
willingly let die." The great event which will be seen to 
have mainly characterized his administration — the de- 
liverance from bondage of four millions of human beings, 
and the establishment of perfect freedom throughout the 
land, will place his administration among those great 
epochs in human affairs which are most closely connec- 
ted with the progress of the race. 

It will be appropriate in the observance of this day, 
if since nothing can be said to deepen the impression of 
the nation's grief; nothing added to increase the sense of 
the horror of the crime ; and nothing in regard to the 
character of the murdered President which has not been 



already many times said, we turn our thoughts to the 
state of the country at his death, to the things which 
have been done as the result of his administration, and 
to those which remain to be done that future perils may 
be avoided, and that our country, carrying out the pur- 
poses of our fathers, may occupy its appropriate place 
among the nations of the earth. 

Our Constitution has not made it, as is done in mon- 
archical countries, treason to " compass or imagine the 
death" of the chief magistrate of the nation, or of any 
individual in the land. In England, and in all coun- 
tries under a monarchy, the act which has been per- 
formed here would have bean treason.* But it was a 
main purpose of the founders of our Republic to avoid 
alike in name, in authority, in hereditary rank, in titles 
of nobility, and in corruption of blood, all that has been 
engrafted on the idea of royalty ; all that could suggest 
the idea of a monarchy. To have designated such a 
crime as that which has been committed treason, there- 
fore, would have been to introduce an idea into the con- 
stitution entirely foreign to all our notions of government. 
Hence, under our laws, the assassination even of the 
President of the United States, whether the act of an 
individual without concert with others, or whether the 
result of a wide-spread conspiracy ; whether an act per- 
formed by a man accustomed to mimic tragedies and 
scenes of blood, or whether the result of a plot laid by 
men that have conspired against the life of the Republic, 
and who have formed the plot as the consummation of 
the work of rebellion ; whether it be the mere indulgence 
of private malignant feeling, or whether it be the legiti- 

* Blackstonc, iv. 74, scq. 



mate result of a barbarous system of slavery, culminating 
in a crime so horrid, is, in the eye of the law, simply 
murder, as it would be in respect to the lowest citizen of 
the Republic, and to be tried and punished in the same 
way. The punishment due to treason could not enter 
into the sentence of the individual assassin, or of those 
who employed him. Yet though not treason, but mur- 
der, in the eye of the law, it is no ordinary act of 
murder. It is a crime against the state ; against the 
constitution ; against the entire people of the land ; 
against liberty. For even in a sense which does not 
occur under a hereditary monarchy, the honor of the 
nation is entrusted to the President of the United States, 
and he is more directly the representative of the princi- 
ples of its liberties and its laws. As one of the people, 
not by a hereditary claim, he is placed in that high office 
by their own direct act ; he is clothed with authority 
solely by their choice ; he is exalted by their will to be 
at the head of the army and the navy ; he is appointed 
to execute the laws of the land ; he is entrusted, with 
his constitutional advisers, to regulate the intercourse of 
the nation with the other nations of the earth. Never, 
in any country, has so much been permanently entrusted 
to a public ruler by the direct will of the people as is 
entrusted to a President of the United States ; in no 
other land can a prince, potentate, emperor, king, czar, 
sultan, shah, feel that he has been made so directly the 
depository of honor and power as a President of the 
United States. In a sense then which could not occur 
even in the assassination of shah, sultan, king, emperor, 
or czar, even though it be technically called " treason," 
there is in the murder of a President of the United 
States a malignity and atrocity ; an offence against a 



9 

nation ; a personal offence against every individual of the 
nation, which could not occur elsewhere. Technically 
it is not treason ; morally, such an act is blacker than 
that by which Henry of Navarre fell, and is only to be 
compared with that in which William of Orange was 
consigned to the grave. 

The world is always shocked at the assassination of 
the supreme Magistrate of a nation. So even in Russia, 
the government of which has been defined to be " an ab- 
solute despotism, limited by the right of assassination." 
So when Henry IV, and William the Silent were mur- 
dered ; so even in the multiplied assassinations of the 
successors of the Antonines in the Roman empire, where 
in the ninety-two years that followed the reign of Com- 
modus, himself assassinated, " thirty-two emperors, and 
twenty-seven pretenders to the empire alternately 
hurled each other from the throne"* — when Commodus, 
Pertinax, Caracalla, Eliogobalus, Severus, Maximus, 
Balbinus, Gordian perished by assassination ; so under 
Oriental despotism; so in the attempts made on the 
lives of the First and the Third Napoleons ; and so the 
attempts made on the life of the present Queen of Eng- 
land. In a monarchy such an act may unsettle and de- 
range the whole government, and change the succession 
as it may be intenced to do ; it may lead to the horrors 
of civil war ; it may deluge a land in blood. In our own 
country, such is the felicity above other nations of our 
civil institutions, that such an act, bloody and horrible 
as it is, does not arrest the wheels of government for a 
moment ; lays a foundation for no hope in rebellion ; does 
not disturb the peaceful relations to foreign powers, and 

* Sismondi. 



10 

may be followed, as soon as the oath of office can be ad- 
ministered, by efficient efforts to bring to punishment 
the immediate murderers, and all those who have in any 
way been concerned in planning and promoting the 
crime. We were appalled by the crime ; we mourned as 
no nation ever mourned ; but the operations of the Gov- 
ernment were not suspended for a single day, or even 
for an hour. 

The crime of assassination, however, great as it is in 
itself, and aggravated as it may be by the position and 
office of the murdered man, may be aggravated by pe- 
culiar circumstances in regard to his character, to the 
work which he is engaged in performing, to the service 
which he has rendered or is rendering to his country, 
to the sacrifices which he has made, and to his near ap- 
proach to triumph, and honor, and peace. In a passage 
in the great dramatist which will occur to every one as 
applicable to the event which we mourn, and which pro- 
bably, in reference to that event, has been more frequently 
in the minds of men, or more frequently quoted than any 
other, these circumstances are referred to with all the 
beauty of poetry, and with all the tenderness of appeal 
of which our language is capable : 

Treason has done his worst ; nor steel, nor poison, 
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 

Can touch him further. He 

Hath born his faculties so meek, hath been 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking off; 
And pity, like a naked, new-born babe, 
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed 
Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 
That tears shall drown the wind. 



11 

The assassination of Washington would at any time 
have filled the world with horror. But suppose it had 
occurred just at the close of the war of the Revolution — 
on his way to Yorktown — and in full prospect of the 
capture of Cornwallis, and of the end of the conflict : 
after all the struggles, and trials, and sacrifices, and toils 
of seven years' war ; after the scenes at Valley Forge, 
and the retreats which he had been compelled to make, 
and the days of darkness so long and so gloomy, and 
now when light was dawning, and the war was ending, 
and the wisdon of his plans was about to be manifested 
to the world, and the world was about to do him homage 
as among the greatest of its captains, and the purest of 
its patriots, and he had the prospect of reposing many 
years the honored of mankind in his own quiet home, 
suppose that then the assassin's dirk had laid him ' low 
in death. What is the assassination of a despot, a he- 
reditary prince, a man who has nothing but a hereditary 
rank to entitle him to the notice of the world, as com- 
pared with such a deed ! 

Our late President was murdered just as the war was 
ending, and as the results of his plans were about to be 
apparent. No man ever entered on an office in such cir- 
cumstances as he did ; no man ever had more difficulties 
to contend with; no man ever had more perplexing ques- 
tions to solve ; no man was ever placed in circumstances 
when there was so little in the past to guide him ; no 
man ever entered on an office with more decided, bitter, 
keen-eyed, suspicious, relentless, powerful enemies; 'no 
man, in so high a position, with so little of personal ex- 
perience, or with so little in his previous history to en- 
able a nation to determine what would be his course, 
whether one of wisdom or folly, success or failure. No 



12 

man ever passed four years of more anxious care, and of 
patient trial ; of disappointments, reverses, and disasters; 
of uncertainty as to the result; of things that try a 
man's soul and all that there is in man of patience, kind- 
ness, firmness, patriotism, wisdom, justice, and mercy. 
The end was reached. The dark days were passed. The 
war was closing. The object was about to be accom- 
plished, and honor, shall any one say inferior to that 
which awaited Washington when Cornwallis surrendered, 
awaited him, and he fell. So if Moses had fallen when 
he saw the promised land, after the forty years' wander- 
ing in the wilderness ; if Tell, or Bruce, or Wallace had 
thus fallen, shall we say that the world would have been 
more shocked, or that succeeding ages would have re- 
garded the crime as more atrocious, or the murdered man 
as worthy of a more cherished remembrance ? 

In comparing the public life of Mr. Lincoln with 
that of his predecessors in that great office, as must 
and will be done, we cannot now see that any one of 
them, even the greatest, would have accomplished the 
work demanded in his circumstances in a better manner. 
We can be in no uncertainty as to what the majority at 
least of those men would have attempted ; of some of 
them we can have no doubt as to what would have been 
the result. Few of them, indeed, were placed in cir- 
cumstances which would enable us to determine from 
what they did as to what they would have done in our 
time. But the circumstances were such that we know 
what Washington and Jackson would have attempted ; 
for that which, under the blessing of God, they did, 
would lead us to entertain no doubt of what, under the 
same blessing of God, they would have done now. Of 
Washington we know what he would have done. He 



13 

who made arrangements to suppress the " Insurrection " 
in Pennsylvania, and to bring " Shay's Rebellion " in 
Massachusetts to an end, would not have hesitated to 
call forth all a nation's strength to suppress a much 
greater " insurrection," and to annihilate a much more 
formidable "rebellion." Of Jackson, too, we know 
what he would have done. Of him who issued that 
proclamation which the world will never forget in refer- 
ence to the Acts of Nullification in South Carolina ; of 
him who was informed by the Governor of Virginia that 
he would never permit the President of the Uuited States 
to send an army through that State to suppress an in- 
surrection in South Carolina, and who is reported to 
have said to those who conveyed the message, " Go and 
tell the Governor of Virginia that I shall not send an 
army but lead it," we cannot doubt what he would 
have attempted, or what he would have done in this rebel- 
lion — the development — the culmination — the climax — 
the appropriate ending of the doctrine of nullification, 
and of the life and labors of its great author John C. 
Calhoun. Under God, the conqueror of Cornwallis, and 
the hero of New Orleans, would have suppressed this 
" insurrection," and brought this " rebellion " to a close. 

Without any disparagement, however, to the memory 
of those great men, it may be doubted whether either of 
them would have accomplished the work to be done in 
suppressing this great rebellion, and in restoring the 
Union of these States, in a better manner than has been 
done by him who has been so suddenly taken from the 
nation. He had not indeed their military ability. He 
had had little experience in public life. He had not 
been tried in any position that determined his fitness for 
the emergency; but he had a character of thorough 



14 

honesty and integrity. He had been formed to habits 
of patient industry and incorruptible virtue. He was 
eminently a man of good sense and far-seeing sagacity. 
He was distinguished for kindness, for large-heartedness, 
for a regard for the rights of all. He was a man who 
felt his way; who studied events; who adapted his 
measures to the course of things. He had an object ; 
but he had no inflexible theory in regard to the measures 
in which the object was to be reached. That object was 
to preserve the government ; to restore the Union ; to 
suppress the insurrection. From that he never swerved, 
and every measure of the administration tended to that 
end. In that he was firm, immovable, unchanging. At 
first, it was to restore the Union, expecting that slavery 
would continue to exist as before ; then, to restore the 
Union with slavery, if that could be done, or without 
slavery, if it should be necessary to abolish it in order 
to that restoration ; and then, when it became apparent 
that the rebellion was for the support of slavery, and 
was sustained by slavery, that the Union should be re- 
stored, and that slavery should be abolished altogether, 
by the progress of the army ; by a proclamation of free- 
dom ; and by a fixed and permanent amendment of the 
Constitution. 

A man more confident in regard to the measures to be 
pursued — with a theory to be carried out at all hazards — 
would not have studied events ; a man more stern, severe, 
harsh, unforgiving, would have irritated the enemies of 
the government, and produced a more bitter hostility ; a 
man less genial, kind, affable, accessible, could not have 
secured the warm affection of the great mass of the 
nation; for a man of mere intellectual power, or military 
ability, or great qualities as a statesman, if distinguished 



15 

only for these things, the nation would not have wept 
as this nation did when he died ; for of no other ruler of 
any nation, probably, could it have been said after four 
years of such a war, after summoning more than half a 
million of men to break up the confederacy, to put down 
the rebellion, and even to abolish slavery, that " the South 
had lost its best friend." As much as any man in this 
nation, perhaps as much as any man in any country, he 
has shown that he had talents equal to the emergency ; 
and this is after all the best tribute that can be paid to 
human ability. 

There was an impression quite prevalent in the nation 
when he died that was not justified by anything that had 
occurred in his life, and the justice of which history will 
not sanction. Men at once, as they generally do on such 
occasions, began to be wise, and to speculate on the designs 
of Providence in such an event, and became prophets in 
interpreting the designs of Providence in his removal. 
The theory of interpretation was, that he was too mild, 
too kind, too gentle for the emergency ; that his heart 
was too full of clemency to meet what was demanded in 
the punishment of the authors of the public calamities ; 
that in his nature mercy and justice were not blended in 
proper proportions; rebellion and treason, under him 
would have little to fear ; that the great ends of jus- 
tice would be defeated, and that, therefore, it was neces- 
sary that he should be removed, even by the hand of an 
assassin, that the interests of justice might be lodged in 
hands that would more sternly execute the laws. Had 
it required no firmness to maintain one steady course 
through four years of unequalled war, and when all the 
experiences of other wars failed to instruct the nation ? 
Did it indicate no sense of the majesty and authority of 



16 

law that all this array of forces was called forth to re- 
establish law, and to maintain its authority ? Did it re- 
quire no firmness to remove men from high places in civil 
life, in the army, in the navy, and to call others to their 
places when they were found incompetent, or when it 
was seen that the public service required men that would 
more vigorously prosecute the war ? Those who have 
thought that he was removed by death for want of that 
firmness which would have promoted the ends of justice, 
cannot have carefully reflected on the comparative firm- 
ness required to remove a military commander at the 
head of a hundred thousand men, the idol of the army, 
in a great emergency when the result of the conflict was 
at stake, and even on a march towards a fearful battle, 
placing another, as yet untried, in command, and that 
kind of firmness required to prosecute great criminals by 
the slow and careful processes of law, and to punish men 
of enormous and acknowledged crimes. When the whole 
history of this administration shall have been written, 
it will be found that the controlling element of the 
character of the man who was placed at the head of 
it, was not mere gentleness and compassion ; was not 
levity and trifling ; was not kindness at the expense of 
the public good ; was not mercy regardless of justice ; 
and that those prophets have been mistaken who have 
supposed that God removed him in order that the affairs 
of justice might pass into sterner hands. 

At the commencement of the administration of the late 
President, a conflict of arms on a scale unparalleled in this 
country, and almost in the world, was inevitable. There 
was no way in which it could be avoided, but by aban- 
doning the Constitution, the Union, and the idea of gov- 
ernment itself; by admitting that the Union under the 



17 

constitution was a mere cenfederacy, held together by no 
sacred tie, arid to be dissolved at the pleasure of any one 
of the States. No one saw what would be the magni- 
tude of the conflict, yet no one could be ignorant that it 
must be on a large scale when eleven of the States should 
rise in arms against the rest of the Union. It was called 
"war" and was in certain senses regarded as "war," 
though the true name which should have been given to 
it, and the name which posterity will give to it, was 
"insurrection' and "rebellion? In the future records of 
the history of this country it will be placed beside the 
" Whiskey Insurrection " in Pennsylvania, and " Shay's 
Rebellion " in Massachusetts. It was the magnitude of 
the attempt, and not its nature, that exalted it into the 
dignity of war, as far as there can be dignity in war, and 
that made it necessary that it should be conducted, in 
some measure, in accordance with the recognized rules 
of warfare, as between independent nations. Yet this 
very recognition, at home and abroad, and all the acts 
consequent on it, always implied a falsehood, and was 
based on a false idea — an idea which the events of the last 
two months have shown to be false. War is a conflict 
between real governments ; between independent powers ; 
between governments and people that have the right to 
regulate their own affairs by land and by sea. The ap- 
plication of the term " war" to this insurrection and re- 
bellion implied, so far as that term went, that there was 
such a government as the Southern Confederacy ; that it 
ought to be recognized as such; that those engaged in 
its service ought to be treated as belligerents, and not as 
traitors and rebels ; that its acts were entitled to honor- 
able notice as acts between nations ; and that peace was 
somehow to be made by negotiation with that power 



IS 

considered as a government. It is much to be regretted 
that the necessity of the case, as was supposed, made it 
unavoidable to regard this as war, and not simply as 
insurrection and rebellion; and that the preservation of 
peace with foreign nations, who at once recognized 
the North and the South as alike "belligerents," de- 
manded that the false idea should be kept before the 
world. Posterity will correct the indispensable and in- 
evitable mistake. 

I have always been opposed to war, as war. I have 
preached much against it, and have never uttered one 
word in favor of it, and never shall. I have held it to 
be barbarous ; to be contrary to the spirit of Christian- 
ity; to be attended with innumerable curses to mankind; 
to be unjust in principle, and commonly ineffectual in 
securing the object in view. The "pride, pomp, and 
circumstance of war" has, for me, never had any attrac- 
tion or excited any interest; and I have looked and 
hoped for the time when, as the brightest day in the 
world's history, on the whole earth, " wars and rumors " 
of wars should cease ; and have believed, and still be- 
lieve, that when the Gospel shall pervade the earth, war 
will be forever at an end. I lifted up my voice, in my 
place, against the Mexican war ; nor did I ever see or 
feel, nor do I now, that that war was in any way neces- 
sary, or that it tended to promote the honor, the peace, 
or the permanent prosperity of the nation. I believed 
then, as I do now, that it was a war prompted by sla- 
very ; wholly in the interest of slavery; and designed 
to extend slavery. I never learned the history of its 
battles, nor do I now desire to have them in remem- 
brance; and I now regard it as one of the direct and effi- 
cient causes of the late rebellion. 



19 

Yet, from the beginning, I have regarded it as my 
duty to defend the course of the Government in regard 
to this so-called war. I have felt that the very exist- 
ence of the Government, the Constitution, the Union, 
the nation, depended on the successful issue of the 
struggle. I have preached often on the subject ; I have 
prayed uniformly, in public, in the family, and in the 
closet, for success to attend the national arms. I have 
rejoiced in the successes, I have mourned, with others, 
over the reverses in battle. I have encouraged my own 
peoj)le to enlist in the service of the country ; I rejoiced 
when more than ninety of my young men were at one 
time in the army or in the navy ; and when any have 
fallen in the service of their country, killed in battle or 
dying in the camp, I have endeavored to comfort their 
friends and families by the idea that they died in a good 
cause, and that the result of the conflict, terrible to them 
as was the sacrifice, would be worth to the nation all 
which it would cost. 

To some this course in me, as in others of my brethren 
in the ministry, has doubtless appeared to be incon- 
sistent and contradictory. Yet I have never justified 
it as war, on the ordinary principles of war, or as con- 
nected with the usual objects of war. It has been 
simply and only as an attempt to maintain order, just 
authority, and law, by putting down an insurrection 
and rebellion. So I vindicate an effort on the part of 
the government of a city, a state, or a nation to quell a 
riot, to suppress a mob that threatens the public peace, 
and to do it, if necessary, by military power. When 
the mayor of a city, the sheriff of a county, or the execu- 
tive of a State, cannot by civil process secure the exe- 
cution of the laws ; when men arm themselves to resist 



20 

just processes of law; when they make riotous demon- 
stration against the public authority, it is right to call in 
the aid of military force to assist and maintain the peace. 
Without the recognition of this right there could be no 
security in a community, no certain prevalence of law. 
Yet the proper employment of military force begins and 
ends there ; and when that one object is accomplished, 
the exercise of power returns at once to the civil au- 
thorities. The moment the exercise of the military 
power becomes permanent, and the moment the military 
commander assumes the function of the judge or the 
sheriff, that moment liberty is at an end. In such a 
strife, too, the parties in the conflict are not on an 
equality. They are not "belligerents." The riotous 
assemblage, the mob, is not a recognized power to be 
" treated " with or to make terms ; nor are the captives 
to be regarded as prisoners of war, or to be exchanged 
as such ; they are enemies of the government and of the 
law, and are to be dealt with as such. 

Precisely of this nature, though on a gigantic scale, 
has been this rebellion and insurrection. Precisely in 
this relation are those who in arms have resisted the 
Government, and who have attempted its overthrow. 
Precisely in this sense, and this only, will it be referred 
to by posterity. Precisely in this sense, and this only, 
have I defended the Government in the struggle. Pre- 
cisely in this sense, and this only, do I rejoice in the 
result. I am not insensible to the greatness of the sac- 
rifices made and the services rendered on many battle- 
fields. I am not insensible to the high and noble qualities 
evinced by those who have gone forth to these conflicts. 
I am not insensible to the magnitude of their sufferings, 
or to the horrid cruelties to which they have been sub- 



21 



jected, or to the treatment which they have received, 
more savage and barbarous than has ever before charac- 
terized any war ever waged in the world, and which has 
shocked all our moral feelings, and made us horrified 
and confounded that such things could have been done 
in what was regarded as a Christian land, and in the 
nineteenth century. I am deeply alive to the fact that 
some of the names of the men engaged in this struggle, 
and that have conducted, under God, the conflict to a 
close so glorious, will, for all that is honored in military 
ability and skill, stand ever onward by the side of the 
names of Csesar, Alexander, Napoleon, and Wellington. 
But it is not in this as tvar that I rejoice. It is not for 
the acquisition of glory ; it is not that there has been 
any " war," in the proper sense of that term ; it is that 
an organized, unlawful resistance to the Government, 
has been broken up; that the most formidable insurrec- 
tion has been suppressed that the world has ever known; 
that the sternest rebellion that has ever existed has been 
subdued ; that the civil authorities, in accordance with 
all just principles of government, and as directed by the 
Constitution, have called to their aid the military arm to 
secure the proper observance of the laws, and that ban- 
ners, and swords, and helmets, and shields, and all the 
equipments of war, may now pass from public view; that 
the courts may hold their sessions, and the customs be- 
collected, and the laws of the land again extend their 
healthful influence over those regions lately the scenes 
of rebellion, and covered with blood. 

Much — bad as are the passions of men which prompt 
to it, and barbarous as may be the manner in which it 
may be waged — has been accomplished in our world in 
carrying out the Divine purposes, by war. It would seem 



9.9 



that, such is human nature, there are objects to he ac- 
complished, in the promotion of liberty, in securing the 
just rights of men, in emancipating from oppression and 
slavery, which can be secured only by the terrible con- 
flicts of arms. So deeply rooted are existing evils ; so 
much are they interlaced with the very structure of 
society ; so honored and defended by custom, by law, 
and by power; so inveterate; so identified with what 
seems to be the interests of the state ; so connected with 
wealth and rank ; and so sustained, it may be, by the 
prevailing views of religion, that no moral means will re- 
move them ; that no appeal to the consciences, the reason, 
or the real interest of mankind will check them. It be- 
comes necessary, then, to bring in the desolations of the 
tempest, or the storm of battle to sweep them away, and 
to place a nation or the race on a higher permanent level. 
The principle is, that when the obstructions to the pro- 
gress of just views of religion and liberty cannot be re- 
moved by moral means, God employs force — the force 
of arms and armies — to carry out his great purposes. 
When those evils are gigantic in their nature; when 
they are increasing ; when they are becoming more and 
more consolidated and confirmed; when they call to 
their support the professed friends of virtue and reli- 
gion; when they cannot be detached from existing forms 
.of government, or institutions of society, then the forms 
themselves are overthrown, and new methods of govern- 
ment are substituted in their place. Thus it became 
necessary, in the deliverance of the people of God in 
ancient time from oppression and slavery, that Egypt. 
Assyria, Babylon, and Rome should be successively 
overthrown ; thus no small part of the principles of lib- 
erty secured to Europe in the middle ages was the result 



of war; and thus not a few of the great principles of 
freedom which have gone into the British Constitution, 
and which have been perpetuated in our own, are the 
results of the conflicts of arms. The battles fought were, 
in fact, battles for liberty ; the result has gone into the 
permanent condition of the world. 

Our fathers, when they framed our Constitution, 
hoped and believed that slavery in our country would 
gradually and certainly die away. With this belief they 
were careful not to introduce the word into our Consti- 
tution, for they seemed to desire that future ages should 
find no evidence in that instrument that it had ever ex- 
isted in the land. By implication, indeed, they unhap- 
pily made provision for its temporary recognition and 
protection. By peaceful means ; by the progress of just 
moral sentiment ; by the mild influence of religion ; by 
the advance of light ; by experience of the blessings of 
liberty, and by the belief that free labor would be found 
to be more conducive to the public good than the labor 
of a slave, they hoped that the time would not be far 
distant when the clank of fetters would be no more heard 
in the land. 

Never were statesmen less sagacious and keen-sighted 
than they were in this. If suffered to exist at all, slavery 
grows everywhere, and a point had been reached in our 
own country which never could have been anticipated, 
when it was rendered certain that slavery would never 
cease in the land by the use of mere moral means ; when 
it was plain that it could be removed only by war. It 
had been so recognized in the Constitution that it 
could not be detached by any power which the nation 
possessed ; it had been made the basis of representation 
in the General Government ; it controlled in political af- 



24 

lairs the entire country ; it had a vast area of territory 
in which to spread, and was extending the area ; it con- 
trolled the Government, and had secured the influence 
of the Supreme Court to its highest demands ; it claimed 
that its production controlled the manufactures and the 
commerce of the world ; it had originated, apparently 
without violation of the Constitution, the most infamous 
law that had ever been enacted in a Protestant land ; it 
built cities and towns in the North, and made merchant 
princes there, and sent out vessels laden with its pro- 
ductions across the ocean, and claimed a power to guide 
affairs in the kingdoms and empires of the Old World. 
More than all, the sentiments of the country had changed 
on the whole subject of slavery. The Bible was called 
to its defence, and, at the bidding of the great political 
leader of the South, the church, North and South, came 
to the defence of slavery as an institution of God. With 
one voice the church at the South, of all denominations, 
came to that defence, and thousands of the ministers of 
religion and members of the Christian church at the 
North echoed the sentiment, and defended it as an ap- 
pointment of God. 

There was no hope. There was no moral power to 
remove the evil. There was nothing, since the better 
feelings of men had failed as a source of reliance, but the 
bad passions of war that could be employed to remove 
the curse, and to make the land free. Hence this insur- 
rection, this rebellion, this " war." It was fit that the 
defenders of slavery should themselves, in their mad- 
ness, destroy the institution ; it was fit that the results 
of the unrequited labor of two hundred and fifty years 
should be made to pay for the wrongs that had been 
done ; it was fit that, where so much blood had been 



20 

shed by stripes inflicted on the African, blood should 
flow freely from the masters as a retaliation for that 
blood ; and it was fit that the North which had been en- 
riched by the avails of that unrequited labor, and had 
done so much to sustain the institution by its complicity 
with it, and had furnished defenders of it in the schools 
of learning, in the seminaries of religion, in the pulpit, 
at the bar, in their own legislative halls, through their 
representatives in Congress, on the benches of justice, 
and even in the seat of the Chief Magistracy of the 
nation, should share also the burdens and the sorrows 
of the war of emancipation. It is done. The object is 
accomplished, and the power of slavery is dead. 

At this eventful period of our national history ; after 
such a conflict as we have passed through ; after such a. 
trial of the patriotism and the resources of the nation ; 
after such a test applied to the Constitution and the Gov- 
ernment with reference to its ability to sustain itself; 
after such efforts made to overthrow the Government — 
efforts unparalleled in the history of nations ; after the 
indifference of foreign nations to our struggle, their want 
of sympathy with us, the scarcely suppressed hope that 
our Government would be overthrown, and that the 
experiment of Republican government would prove to be 
a failure ; after their prophesyings that the Southern 
Confederacy would be triumphant, their joy at its suc- 
cesses, and their sorrow at its reverses; now in the pros- 
pect of returning peace, union, and order, it is a proper 
time to inquire what has been the effect of this conflict 
in our own country ; whether the Constitution has borne 
well the strain upon it; and whether the measures 
adopted in the prosecution of the conflict have been in 
accordance with the spirit of the Constitution ; whether 



2G 

any securities have been reached against such a conflict 
in the future ; whether the events which have occurred 
have made any changes in the Constitution necessary to 
adapt it to the altered state of affairs, or whether the 
measures which have been adopted have made necessary 
any new guarantees in securing in future emergencies 
the objects contemplated by the framers of the Con- 
stitution. 

Every nation has its own idea — its own object to ac- 
complish : an object aimed at whether the Constitution 
be written or unwritten. Babylon, Egypt, Macedonia, 
Rome, Russia, France, Spain, Austria, Holland, Eng- 
land, has, or has had, such an idea. There is that which 
characterizes the nation ; which gives it individuality ; 
which assigns it a place in history — an origin, a growth, 
a development, a character which enables the historian 
to give it its proper place, as the character of an indi- 
vidual man gives him a place in the world, and distin- 
guishes him from all other men. 

The idea in our history has been as peculiar and 
marked as in any other nation ; an idea contemplated 
in the formation of the Constitution, and pursued, with- 
out variableness, in all the terrible fierceness with which 
this conflict has been waged. 

The great objects which our fathers sought in the war 
of Independence and in framing the Constitution, were 
undoubtedly, nationality, in the proper sense of that 
term ; union of States, not nominal, but real; a government, 
not an advisory power ; freedom for themselves, and ulti- 
mately for all the dwellers in the land. 

These also are the things on which the issues in this 
conflict with the insurrection and rebellion have turned ; 
these are the purposes which the nation, in this war, 
committed itself to accomplish. 



27 

(a) Nationality — a place us a nation among the na- 
tions of the earth ; nationality in the strict and proper 
sense : one government, one system of laws, one con- 
gress, one supreme court, one constitution, one people. 

(b) Union — in the strict and proper sense ; not union 
as a confederacy, for that the nation had tried before the 
formation of the Constitution ; but union under one gov- 
ernment, and where there would be no admitted right 
to nullify the acts of the nation, or to secede and form a 
separate organization. 

(<?) A government — strictly so called — where the acts 
of the body appointed to make the laws should be recog- 
nized as law, and not received as advice ; where they 
should be binding on individuals, and not submitted to 
independent states as suggestions. 

(d) Freedom. This was always the purpose of our 
fathers ; this has been made now definitely the purpose 
of the nation. It is not merely that the nation shall be 
free as in respect to foreign powers, but that all the in- 
habitants of the land shall be free — that the last remnant 
of bondage, save for crime, shall cease ; that the last 
shackle that binds the limbs of men shall be broken. In 
the most unmistakable manner this has been declared 
to be the purpose of the nation; this has become the 
distinct ultimate end now contemplated in the restora- 
tion of the Union. 

In looking now at our country, as this conflict comes 
to a close, with reference to the question whether the 
great objects sought by our fathers in the Constitution 
are to be accomplished ; as we look upon the desolations 
made by war, the wasted fields, the ruined towns, the 
slaughtered men, the sorrowful homes, the interruptions 
of intercourse, the anarchy that seems to reign over so 



28 

large a part of our land, it is natural to ask, first, what 
things there are connected with national happiness and 
prosperity that have not been affected by the war ; that 
remain fixed and unchanged amidst these desolations of 
battle. 

All is not changed, all is not ruined. These hills, val- 
leys, streams, rivers, lakes ; these vast prairies ; these 
forests of wide extent ; these beds of coal, and fountains 
of oil, and streams of healing waters ; these rocks where 
there is gold, and these veins of silver; these inex- 
haustible treasures of iron, and copper, and lead, will 
remain. The storm of war rolls over them, and does not 
disturb them. Desolation marks the movement of an 
army to and fro ; houses are burned, and harvests are 
consumed, and roads are torn up, and fields are laid 
waste, and families are driven from their homes, and it 
is sad, and we weep, but nature is the same. Other 
houses will be built, other roads will be laid down, the 
fields will wait for the sower and the reaper, to yield 
again their luxuriant harvests. All over the land, too, 
by war, there are new-made graves, and cemeteries for 
those whom the nation will delight to honor ; but a new 
generation will spring up, and in the very fields, and 
along the rivers and valleys where the war raged, the 
plough, and the water-wheel, and the hammer, and the 
shuttle, will be plied again as busily as ever. The plain 
of Esdrcelon, the fields of Marathon, Waterloo, Pharsalia, 
are what they were before the thunder of war was heard 
there, and when all the myriads that struggled there 
have long since passed away. 

But this is not precisely the thought on which I wish 
now to fix your attention. Amidst all the changes and 
desolations of war, how many things connected with our 



20 

civil and social institutions ; with the administration of 
justice ; with the protection of our rights ; with our 
schemes of education ; with our domestic enjoyments ; 
with the arts, with manufactures, with living, with 
charity, are still preserved; how few are in any way 
affected our civil rights. Are they not protected? 
Are our courts closed? Have the judges ceased to de- 
fend the cause of the widow and the fatherless ? Are 
our rights of property disturbed ? Are our title-deeds 
destroyed ? Are the ancient land-marks removed ? Has 
a man ceased to know the limits of his own farm, or to 
be able to recognize his own quiet home ? Do not men 
pursue their callings in life, safe in character, safe in 
person, safe in limb, safe in the enjoyment of the avails 
of their labor ? Who among us is there that feels that, 
if he is wronged, the laws of the land will no longer fur- 
nish him protection ? Who alleges that the fountains of 
justice have been poisoned, and that the " ermine" has 
been polluted? Our schools and colleges, are they 
closed ? Harvard, Yale, Nassau Hall, do they not yet 
stand, as their founders desired that they should stand, 
richer in endowments than ever ? Our common schools, 
are they closed, so that the children of the land are no 
more to be educated ? Our manufactories, are they sus- 
pended ? Has the sound of the spindle and the hammer 
ceased in the land ? Does the foreigner when he travels 
through the States move among ruins? Nay, in the 
very places where such things never existed before, in- 
stitutions of industry have sprung up as if by magic, 
and in the South where they were unknown before, the 
war itself has summoned them into being, and taught a 
great people there that they can do what it was sup- 
posed could be done only in the North. Our benevolent 



30 

institutions, have they been broken up ? Our charities, 
have they ceased to flow ? Our asylums for the blind, 
the deaf, the insane, are they abandoned ? Our bene- 
factions, are the fountains dried up ? Where has one 
such institution been closed by this war ? In all the 
world besides, where have there been such charities as 
those of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, pecu- 
liar to our land, peculiar to this war. Our cities, villa- 
ges, towns, are they depopulated ? When have they 
ever grown with such rapidity in size and in wealth ? 
Our country is not ruined. Boston, New York, Phila- 
delphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, remain now that 
the war is over ; and the issues of the war, the removal 
of slavery, the change in the habits of the people, will 
yet make New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Augusta, 
Charleston — yes Charleston — what they never have been, 
and what they never would have been under that curse 
which has rested hitherto on all that Southern land. 

Nature, or the God of nature, more in this than any 
other country, made us to be one. It is true that the 
existence of distinct and separate nations is not always 
determined by the nature of a country ; by its climate, 
its productions, its mountains, its rivers. The Alps, the 
Pyrenees, and the Apennines ; the Rhine, the Nile, the 
Danube, the Euphrates; the intervention of barren 
wastes, lakes, seas, oceans — may, in many instances, de- 
termine the actual boundaries of nations; but those 
boundaries may be crossed by the same nation. A na- 
tion in its conquests may pass over high mountains; the 
great river may not only flow along continuous king- 
doms, but through the same nation ; an empire may ex- 
tend across great lakes, and beyond the boundaries of 
oceans ; tribes of people separated by the limits which 



31 

nature fixed, may, by conquest, be blended into one. 
But still there are indications or boundaries thus fixed 
by nature which would seem to be a proper limit of an 
empire. Where there are no natural limits of defence 
for hundreds or thousands of miles of what must be con- 
terminous territory; where there would be a prospect of 
continual border wars ; where great mountains extend 
through a country ; where great rivers flow to the sea 
through thousands of miles, constituting the natural out- 
let of the productions of the soil ; where the ports and 
harbors on the ocean are equally necessary to a vast and 
fertile interior ; where the productions of different parts 
of a country are demanded by all, and the interchange 
between the two will promote the prosperity of all; 
where it is desirable that the same regulations of com- 
merce and revenue should be applied to all ; where it is 
important for manufacturers that the same laws should 
be extended over all; or where for the protection of com- 
merce, or for the common defence against other nations, 
it is desirable that there should be union, then nature, 
or the God of nature, most manifestly designed that the 
people of such a country should be one. In no nation 
has there been so marked a designation of this kind as 
in our own. "We cannot say that different nations, king- 
doms, empires, republics, might not exist in what con- 
stitutes the territory of the United States; but we can 
say that, as between the North and the South, there is 
no natural boundary, and, as there are no indications 
where such a boundary should be fixed, any arbitrary 
boundary would leave thousands of miles on either side 
to be guarded and defended ; that the great river which 
flows through the West, and makes its w r ay to the ocean 
along the borders of great States, is the natural outlet of 



32 

all that region, and that its free navigation is essential to 
the whole ; that the natural productions of the North 
and the South are so related to each other as to make 
them essential to the common prosperity, and to make it 
desirable that they should be under the same regulations 
of commerce; and that in relation to foreign powers, 
alike on our own continent and abroad, it is eminently 
desirable that the nation should be one. It is certain 
that our great prosperity began when these natural indi- 
cations of what we ought to be were recognized in the 
National Union, and not under the old " Confederation." 

In like manner, in origin, in language, in literature, 
in civilization, in religion, we are made to be one. The 
mode of settlement of the country ; the time when the 
various settlements were made; the principles which 
the early inhabitants brought with them ; the institutions 
which they established were the best that they could be 
on the supposition that the nation was destined to be 
one. They were not, in the main, portions of different 
nations that were thrown upon these shores ; they were 
in the ruling and controlling elements essentially one 
people, and the original adaptation and tendency found 
its proper consummation only when the Constitution was 
adopted, making us in form one nation. Slowly and 
cautiously, indeed, but certainly, what had been the 
colonies crystallized around the Constitution as a centre, 
forming not a constrained but a natural union. 

Our national prosperity has received its form and 
measure under the one central government — the Union. 
From the time of the adoption of the Constitution, as 
compared with the progress before, the development has 
had almost the appearance of magic, a growth nowhere 
paralleled among the nations. Then we took our place 



33 

among the nations of the earth. Then began, on an 
equality, our commercial intercourse with other nations. 
Then a navy sprang up. Then uniform laws of revenue 
enabled us to sustain the operations of a Government 
that commanded the respect of the world. Then roads 
were made, and streams were navigated; then the 
wilderness became the abode of men; then cities and 
towns arose everywhere; then new territories rapidly 
converted into states were added to the Union ; then 
resources such as the world had never dreamed of were 
added to our wealth and power. Rapidly our free insti- 
tutions spread from one ocean to the other, all indicating 
that nature designed that this vast land should be one. 

Our history is one. The struggles for independence 
were the struggles of one people, not of many. The same 
rights had been invaded, and liberty had been threatened 
in the same manner, and the invasion of the rights of one 
colony was an invasion of the rights of all. It was prac- 
tically no disadvantage, but might have been by a rival 
regarded as an advantage to the people of South Caro- 
lina that the port of Boston was closed, but the people 
of South Carolina did not so regard it. It was an attack 
on the common liberties of the people, and the heart of 
the entire South was moved in sympathy with the peo- 
ple of the North. In the armies then ; in the delibera- 
tions in the National Congress, there was no distinction 
between the North and the South. The movement for 
independence was the movement of one people; the 
victory at Yorktown was not a matter of sectional, but 
national joy. Side by side men from the South and the 
North fought and fell in battle; their blood flowed 
together; they sleep in a common grave. 

Now, can these things always be forgotten? No. 



u 

The things which prompt to union exist still, and these 
things will not always be allowed to be obliterated. 
When passion subsides, and reason resumes her sway, 
they will be recalled fresh to the memory. They are 
operating now. On the North they have been operating 
with full power, and with the energy and self-sacrifice 
which has sent tens of thousands to the field, and which 
has prompted to this immense sacrifice of treasure and 
of blood. It was not from any spirit of enmity to the 
South that this war was waged. It was with no desire 
for their extermination. It was with no wish to murder 
their citizens, to burn their cities, to destroy their roads, 
to lay waste their plantations. It was, as declared in 
all modes of uttering it, and with the most solemn em- 
phasis, only because the North regarded the Union as of 
inestimable worth to the whole nation, North and South 
alike ; because it was believed that we are capable of a 
greatness which cannot be secured without the Union ; 
because there was a deep conviction that unspeakable 
evils would result from a separation, and that God and 
nature designed, for our common good, that we should be 
one. It was not because the North wished to conquer 
the South, to exterminate them, to break up their con- 
stitutional governments, but because they regarded a 
union with them as so valuable and desirable that to 
secure it they would not listen to any terms of separa- 
tion, whether proposed peaceably, or at the cannon's 
mouth. And this has been, save among a few, the ex- 
pressed purpose of all parties, whatever their form or 
name, at the North. By persuasion ; by yielding to the 
South all the power ; by allowing the South to control 
the Government for more than the period of two-thirds 
of our history; by compromise, — often, often, to the ex- 



35 

tent of the sacrifice of principle, of humanity, and of 
justice, — and now by terrible war, the North has sought, 
and now seeks, to retain the South in the Union. 

And are we to suppose that all this is confined to the 
North ? Are we to believe that the people of the South 
are, or will always be, unmindful of our early history ; 
forgetful of the common sacrifices of the Revolution, and 
blind to the benefits flowing from the Union in its own 
history and ours ? Are we to believe that among the 
masses in the South there is no remaining love for our 
common country ; no grateful remembrance of the com- 
mon sacrifices once made ; no recollection of our common 
origin, language, and religion ; no respect for the wisdom 
and patriotism of her own great men — Washington, Mad- 
ison, Carroll, Rutledge, Pinckney — in forming the Con- 
stitution ? 

Again : as one of the results of this fearful rebellion, 
it is now to be hoped that there will be such a permanent 
conviction on the mind of the nation at large of the crime 
of an attempted " secession," and of the impossibility of 
accomplishing it by arms, as to deter from such attempts 
forever hereafter. It may have been an object worth 
much of the treasure and blood expended in this war, so 
to determine this that the peace of the Union shall never 
be again disturbed by such a cause. 

Since the union of the houses of York and Lancaster, 
the British nation has trembled at the idea of such a war 
as was waged then ; since the civil wars in the time of 
Cromwell, the nation has borne everything, the crown 
has yielded everything, rather than appeal again to the 
sword ; and, so terrible were the scenes of the French 
Revolution, that even that nation trembles and pauses if 
ever on the verge of such scenes again. 



3G 

We cannot now determine — it may be beyond the 
power of man ever to determine — what either the North 
or the South would have done if, at the outset, they had 
known what a war this was to be. I believe the gov- 
ernment in suppressing the insurrection did only what it 
was compelled to do ; what, by the constitution, and by 
every just view of order, law, and right, it was required 
to do ; but I am certain, as all men are, that neither the 
North nor the South anticipated what has actually oc- 
curred ; that neither of them understood the other ; that 
neither did justice to the other in reference to resources, 
to power, to sternness of purpose ; that as the South did 
not understand the North in respect to its love of the 
Union and the constitution, and, I may say, in respect 
to its patriotism, so neither did the North understand the 
South in respect to its military ability, its resources, its 
determined purpose of independence, and its relation to 
its slaves. Who, four years ago, North or South, could 
have anticipated what has been exhibited in these event- 
ful years ? Who among foreign nations believed that 
the people of this country could be so soon transformed 
into a military nation, — rivaling in the vastness of its 
armies, and in its military skill, the old nations long- 
trained for war? Who believed that the war would thus 
continue to rage, when in high places at the North it 
was boldly and confidently said that the struggle would 
be over in " six months ;" and when at the South the 
question was significantly asked of the North, " Will 
they fight f 

After this, the nation will pause in view of what has 
been, and what may be again. Separation will not be 
attempted again in view of such a struggle ; and, the 
Union once restored, we may be assured that the ques- 



■J i 

tion of disunion will not be submitted again to the terri- 
ble ordeal of battle. 

Now that the war is over, there must, there will be, 
alike at the North and the South, increased confidence 
in the Union, and a deepened conviction of its value. 
Not only has our history shown the value of that Union 
in our former unparalleled prosperity and growth, but now 
that the folly, the wickedness and the impracticability 
of a separate confederacy is demonstrated ; now that the 
weakness of the principle on which that confederacy was 
formed are manifest, we may suppose that the patriotic 
sentiments of our fathers on the subject will arise with 
all the augmented power derived from these sad scenes 
to show the value of the Union, and to make it more 
sacred in the eyes of the nation. The evils springing 
from the separate and independent power of the States 
in the time of the Revolution, and the subsequent evils 
under the old Confederation, turned the hearts of all the 
people of the land to the necessity of " a more perfect 
Union. "* Without an army, without a navy, without 
revenues, without the power of imposing a tax of any 
kind ; with no general navigation laws ; with no power 
to control the commerce between the States, or the com- 
merce with foreign nations ; with no supreme tribunal to 
which questions between States, or the individuals of 
different States could be referred, all the evils of gen- 
eral anarchy and bankruptcy were coming upon the 
land, and all the dearly sought benefits of independence 
were certain to be lost. Nothing has ever equalled the 
anxiety of Washington, and Hamilton, and Madison in 
that state of things for the formation of a better govern- 

Preamblc to the Constitution. 



38 

ment; nothing has ever surpassed the earnestness with 
which they pressed upon the States the necessity of such 
a Union — of a government. It was done. The nation 
rejoiced and triumphed. 

With greatly augmented force will the nation see the 
necessity, and appreciate the worth of that Union, when 
it is restored. The crimes and horrors of this war ; the 
sad spectacle which we have presented to the world, and 
the prospect of greater evils unless the Union shall be 
restored, have intensified every argument used by Ham- 
ilton to secure a more perfect Union, and will have taught 
the nation to admire, as it has never admired before, the 
wisdom of the men that formed the constitution, and the 
greatness of the principles which it embodies. 

But again. Beyond all other things accomplished by 
the rebellion, the removal of slavery by the war must 
have an important bearing on the future in our country. 
The perpetuity and extension of that system was the 
sole cause of the rebellion ; the removal of that curse 
from the entire land, not at first contemplated, became 
in the course of events, the distinct purpose of the nation ; 
and though it will not wipe away the tears from the 
cheeks of wives and mothers and sisters, and will not 
restore the limbs of those who have been wounded in 
battle, and will not recall from their graves the brave 
men that have fallen, or that have been murdered in cold 
blood, or that have been tortured by cold and starvation to 
death ; yet it will do much to dry up the tears of those 
that weep, and to comfort the friends of those that have 
fallen, to remember that, under an overruling Providence, 
these sorrows and this blood will have been the means 
of restoring millions of the enslaved to freedom, and of 
staying forever the crimes and curses of oppression in 
the land. 



39 

Whatever is done to remove slavery from a nation, is 
a blessing. It may not be done in the best way; it may 
not be done precisely by the forms of law ; it may be 
done only by a military necessity; it may be that free- 
dom merely follows the flag; but whenever and wherever 
done, the nation, when it is done, has cause for paeans of 
thanksgiving. The States of New England, New York, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are all the richer and the 
better because slavery was abolished in them ; Ohio, Il- 
linois, Indiana, Iowa are richer and better States because 
slavery was prohibited from all the North-West Terri- 
tory; Kansas is a richer and a better State because 
slavery was not forced upon it ; Missouri and Kentucky 
will be among the richest gardens of the world when 
they shall be free ; and Maryland, West Virginia, and 
Tennessee now take their place in a career of prosperity 
by the side of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. So the 
happiest day in reserve by favoring Heaven for old Vir- 
ginia, for Georgia, and for South Carolina — aye, South 
Carolina — is the day when the last shackle of the slave 
shall have been broken, and freedom shall spread its in- 
estimable blessings over all those fertile lands. 

The war has tended all along to this. Freedom is to 
be the result : freedom as far as the flag of the nation 
has been carried ; freedom, as the voluntary act of the 
States on their return to the Union ; freedom, as that 
which is to be incorporated unchangeably into the Con- 
stitution. From these points the nation does not go 
backward ; and as certain as it is that from these points 
the nation does not go backward, so certain is it that its 
career henceforward is to be bright and glorious as it 
has never been. 

A more material point than any which has been con- 



40 

sidered in this Discourse remains ; a point in respect to 
which all the wisdom and the patriotism of the nation 
will be put in requisition, and which presents difficulties, 
in some respects, greater than any which have been in- 
volved in the war. It relates to what has been called 
"reconstruction;" to the question what changes in the 
Constitution, if any, have been shown to be necessary 
by the altered condition of things made by the war ; 
what new guarantees are needed, if any, for the rights 
sought to be secured in the Constitution, and which may 
have at any time been placed in jeopardy by the meas- 
ures adopted in the suppression of the rebellion. 

The first thought here is, that the rebellion lias shown 
that there were defects in the Constitution which should 
be removed, to prevent a recurrence of the same evils. 

In all human governments readjustments become ne- 
cessary. There is but one government that is adapted 
to all times, all places, all circumstances ; one adminis- 
tration that is so comprehensive that it can embrace all 
conditions of things — so wise in its original arrangements 
as to be adapted, without change, to every possible con- 
tingency ; so completely balanced that there shall be nei- 
ther too little power nor too great; so just that it can 
embrace vast general interests and secure at the same 
time the safety of the humblest individual; so powerful 
that it can meet unharmed the shocks of war, and re- 
strain the purposes of the rebellious, and at the same 
time be adapted to the world in times of peace; so vast 
that it can embrace any number or extent of new terri- 
tories, and not leave the central power shaken and weak- 
ened. That is the government of God. All other gov- 
ernments need new adjustments, and the idea of such a 
necessity enters into every written constitution, or, if not 



41 

found in a tvritten constitution, it is found in the slum- 
bering power which, by revolution or convulsion, works 
out such changes. 

Time makes changes necessary. Circumstances occur 
which could not have been anticipated at the formation 
of a government ; new powers are necessary to be con- 
ferred on the government for its preservation, or powers 
originally conferred it is necessary to limit or modify for 
the safety of the people. An enlargement of territory 
by purchase or by conquest; new resources developed 
in the wealth of a nation; new relations to other people; 
an extension of commerce ; a change in the productive 
industry of a country; the growth of arts and manufac- 
tures ; the weakness manifested in times of insurrection 
or civil war, or the assumption at such times of power 
not contemplated in the constitution, and against which 
no effectual checks had been interposed, these and sim- 
ilar things make changes necessary, in the progress of 
events, in the form of the government or in the methods 
of administering it. The constitution of the free states 
of Greece, and the constitution of Rome, were thus re- 
peatedly modified, as the principles of government came 
to be better understood, and as new securities were ne- 
cessary to the preservation of liberty, and new changes 
to meet the advanced condition of the world. 

The English Constitution, though unwritten, has been 
repeatedly modified, and is what it is now as the result 
of successive changes, made mostly by violence, to adapt 
it to the progress of liberty, and the more just views of 
the true notions of government and the rights of man. 
There was, indeed, from the very fact that the constitu- 
tion was unwritten, no express arrangement for amend- 
ment or change in the Constitution, but there was an 



42 

arrangement for change in the hearts and principles of 
the English people, and when they have supposed that 
the interests of the nation demanded a change, a practi- 
cal "amendment" has been incorporated into the Con- 
stitution. At Runny mede ; by the Petition of Rights ; 
by the concessions demanded of Charles I ; by the civil 
wars ; by* the revolution in 1688 ; by the successive acts 
of the nation reducing the power claimed by the Tudors 
and the Stuarts ; by the rise of the middle class in Eng- 
land ; by the position slowly gained by the Commons, 
the English Constitution is now what it is. These changes 
have been produced mainly as the result of bloody wars ; 
none of them in the peaceful manner in which changes 
are provided for in our Constitution. 

It is one of the felicities of our government that such 
changes, to any extent that the public interest may de- 
mand are provided for ; that the framers of the Consti- 
tution, dreading the changes which might be made by 
violence, as in other countries, and foreseeing that new 
exigencies might arise which would demand a re-con- 
struction of what they had done, incorporated into the 
Constitution the most ample provision for any such 
modifications. With the exceptions only that "no 
amendment which may be made prior to the year one 
thousand eight hundred and eight, shall in any man- 
ner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth sec- 
tion of the first article ; (the clauses respecting the im- 
portation and the taxation of slaves,) and that no State, 
without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suf- 
frage in the Senate," any changes may be made; the 
Constitution may be adapted to any new exigency of 
affairs ; the power of the people to amend the Constitu- 
tion is unlimited. Thus, without war, without revolu- 



43 

tion, without peril,, the Constitution may adapt itself to 
any condition to which the nation may rise, and, in like 
manner, the people may remove all the evils, if any, 
which shall have been found at any time to have been 
incorporated into the Constitution. To any new circum- 
stances ; to any enlargement of the national domain ; to 
any new questions which may arise ; to any new rela- 
tions of the general government to foreign governments, 
or to the States of the Union ; to any new demands of 
commerce and of revenue ; to any needed arrangements 
in the executive, the legislative, or the judiciary depart- 
ments, the Constitution may be adjusted without bloody 
conflict ; — safe from the agitations and convulsions which 
have shaken or overthrown other governments in en- 
deavoring to adapt themselves to the advancing condi- 
tion of the world. 

Apart from the war, and independently of the war, 
the progress of things in our country has been such as 
to suggest the necessity of some changes modifying the 
Constitution, to adapt it to the prevailing public senti- 
ment, and to save us from perils which might occur 
under the Constitution even in a time of peace. But 
it is the war mainly which has brought these things 
permanently before the nation, and which has demon- 
strated that there cannot be permanent peace, and 
perfect safety in regard to our liberties, without such 
changes as will save us from those perils in time to come, 
and as will remove from the Constitution those things 
under which the elements of this fearful rebellion have 
been fostered and matured. The nation is to have a 
future history, bright and glorious, it is to be hoped, be- 
yond anything that has yet occurred ; but the character 
of that future will be determined by the arrangements 
which are to be made on the return of pence 



44 

It cannot be supposed that anything that can be said 
here will materially influence the public mind, or be 
worthy of public attention, yet every one is at liberty to 
give expression to his own sentiments on such a subject, 
and no one who loves his country should suppress his 
convictions of what is demanded at such a time as that 
which is now to occur on the establishment of peace. 

I have felt myself bound, in common with thousands 
of others, to sustain the government in its efforts to sup- 
press the rebellion with whatever ability or influence I 
possessed. At all times during the war have I uttered 
my earnest convictions on this subject, nor have I been 
slow to exhort those who could do it to go to the defence 
of their country. But things have occurred in the pro- 
gress of the war which could not but make the friend of 
constitutional liberty pause and ask the question whether 
for such times as these there are sufficient guaranties 
for liberty in the constitution; and whether, if such things 
were repeated, or should become permanent, our liberties 
could be preserved. To some of those things existing 
in the Constitution which have been the occasion of this 
rebellion ; to some of those things which have occurred 
in matters not sufficiently defined and settled in the 
Constitution, which may in the future be fatal to liberty; 
and to some of those where there are rights intended to 
be secured by the Constitution which may not be suffi- 
ciently defined, it may be proper now to ask your 
attention. 

1. A more accurate definition of the power of the 
General Government. Any danger on that subject may 
seem to be imaginary ; perhaps it would be beyond the 
wisdom of man to introduce any safe-guards on that sub- 
ject which are not already found in the Conntitution. 



45 

But no one can fail to see the danger which may exist 
under a Government formed as ours is ; nor can any one 
fail to see that that danger may be augmented by the 
very circumstances of the nation, and by such a war as 
ours has been. No one is ignorant of the perils which 
the framers of the Constitution apprehended on the 
subject, or of the apprehension of the States in regard 
to the central power, or of the checks and balances 
which the framers of the Constitution sought to intro- 
duce into the instrument itself, to guard against that 
danger. All readers of history know how great is the 
danger of the centralization of power ; all who are famil- 
iar with the history of the formation of our Constitution, 
know the jealousy with which the people looked on the 
powers conferred on the General Government, and the 
care which was evinced to guard against the abuse of 
those powers. So sensitive were the people of the 
States ; so jealous were they of this power ; so appre- 
hensive that the principles of an absolute government, 
with all the essential features of a monarchy — the Brit- 
ish form of government except the name — would be 
adopted, that it required all the power of argument, elo- 
quence, and appeal, of Hamilton, of Madison, and of Jay 
in the " Federalist," to calm down their apprehensions ; 
to explain the limits of the power of the executive, and 
to persuade the States to adopt the Constitution. So 
jealous were they still when the Constitution was adopted ; 
so fearful of an assumption of power on the part of the 
General Government, that an amendment of the Con- 
stitution was early adopted, expressing the deep appre- 
hension of the nation. " The powers not delegated to 
the United States," it is said in that amendment, " nor 
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States 
respectively, or to the people." 



4G 

Was it an imaginary fear that, in conferring such 
power on a central goverment, there might be danger 
that it would draw all power to itself? Are there no 
tendencies now which show that those fears were well- 
founded ? Has the war done nothing to show the power 
of an actual tendency on the part of the General Gov- 
ernment to draw all power to itself, and the necessity of 
new guarantees on the subject, if such guarantees can be 
obtained ? 

The main difference between the old Confederation 
and the Government under the present Constitution is, 
that that Confederation had power only to advise free 
and independent States ; the Federal Government has 
power to control individuals. It does what the old con- 
federation government could not do ; it acts directly on 
the individual. It does this independently of State 
governments, and, so far as its jurisdiction goes, inde- 
pendently of State lines and State laws. It has the 
control of the armies of the nation, and these armies may 
be augmented to any extent. It has the control of the 
navy, and the navy may be increased without limit. It 
has a power of taxation, and that power may be exerted 
to any degree necessary to support the army or navy. 
A State has neither army nor navy ; nor can a State in- 
terfere with the direction of the army or the navy of 
the General Government. The old State lines and State 
rights have indeed not been directly invaded ; and in a 
large portion of the Republic they are held sacred, and 
are deemed of inestimable importance. But is the 
respect for State lines, and the security of institutions 
protected by the States, likely to be the same in all the 
States of the Union ? The boundaries of territory, and 
the value of rights as secured by State charters and con- 



47 

stitutions. have indeed a historic interest, and are of in- 
estimable value, as between the States of Massachusetts, 
New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Connecticut, Mary- 
land, Virginia, South Carolina, and other States, but what 
historic interest attaches to the State boundaries between 
Minnesota and Dacotah ; between Nebraska and Mon- 
tana ; between Montana and Nevada ; between Nevada 
and Utah, Oregon, Colorado, California? What rights 
have been secured in these States by old charters ; what 
interests attach to them as States in their early history ? 
Is it not conceivable that the question may be asked, 
What is the value of these State lines, and these State 
constitutions ; and, in the gradual extension of the central 
power of the Government, is there enough in these State 
arrangements to resist an assumption of such power? 
With such a power as the General Government may 
wield ; with such an army as it may call into the field ; 
with such a navy as it may create ; with such taxation, 
and such control of the revenue and of commerce as it 
may exert; with its power to act on individuals in any 
part of the Union ; with its power to control an election, 
and to prescribe the qualifications of voters ; with its 
power of prescribing oaths, and demanding tests as qual- 
ifications for voting, is it to be assumed that the interests 
of the States may never be imperilled, and that the 
entire power over the nation may not yet be absorbed 
under one central government? Never before has the 
power of the General Government been manifested as it 
has been in this war. Never before has a navy like the 
present been created ; never before have such armies 
been placed under the direction of a single man ; never 
before have such hundreds of millions of dollars been 
placed at the disposal of the Government ; never before 



48 

has it been supposed that the Government possessed 
such power to reach, arrest, and imprison individuals, of 
all ranks, and in all parts of the Republic, beyond the 
common forms and securities of law ; never before has it 
had the power to prescribe oaths and tests as qualifica- 
tions for the elective franchise ; never before has it had 
the power to make itself felt in one moment of time in 
all parts of the Republic. That there has been no per- 
manent abuse of this power has been owing to the 
character of those who, in these perilous times, have 
been called to administer the government of the nation, 
and pre-eminently to the character of him whose death 
we mourn ; but who can tell what might occur under men 
less firm in principle, and under the control of more 
ambitious views ? 

The Constitution of the United States has now been 
an object of profound study for nearly eighty years. 
Not only were the great minds of Hamilton, and Mad- 
ison, and Jay employed in illustrating it in the " Fed- 
eralist," but the great powers of Marshall on the bench, 
and Webster in the Senate, have been employed in as- 
certaining its meaning ; in expounding its principles ; in 
considering its applicability to the new questions which 
have come up, and its provisions to meet the conditions 
of a country increasing in wealth and resources, in extent 
of territory, and in the number of the States, as no new 
nation has ever done. Greater minds than these we 
cannot hope will ever grapple with the questions which 
have occurred in determining the principles of the Con- 
stitution; and if the result of those profound studies 
could somehow be embodied in the instrument itself, or 
if the nation would receive them and act on them as 
settled principles, the nation is safe so far as the power 



49 

of the General Government is concerned. Have not the 
perils which have occurred, in connection with this war, 
been such as to make it desirable to embody the results 
of these investigations in some form that shall guide the 
people of the land in all time to come ; that shall forever 
be a check against such a concentration of power as shall 
destroy the very idea of a Union of States ; that shall show 
that the apprehensions which were cherished when the 
adoption of the Constitution was proposed, and which 
were sought to be removed by the " Federalist," have 
ceased forever ? 

2. A more accurate definition of the relation of the 
States to the General Government. 

One of the most difficult things in the Convention that 
formed the Constitution was to adjust the fact of exist- 
ing States — separate and independent governments — to 
the General Government. As all know, the origin of 
the present rebellion is to be traced to the idea that the 
States are still separate and independent governments, 
and the suppression of the rebellion by arms will not 
prevent the same difficulty occurring in the future, unless 
the result of the conflict shall be a fixed and final under- 
standing in regard to that relation. Knowing now, after 
an experience of eighty years, and from the questions in- 
volved in the war, what the real difficulty is ; having 
seen carried out in a fearful strife what was feared by 
those who framed the Constitution ; and understanding 
now better than could have been done then what would 
be the points on which the States would be likely to 
come in collision with the General Government, it may 
be possible now so to readjust those relations as to pre- 
vent a collision forever hereafter. To do this, if it can 
be done, will require all the wisdom of the nation ; wis- 



50 

Uoni not less than that which was demanded in the ori- 
ginal attempt to adjust those relations in the formation 
of the Constitution. Such a question as that had never 
before been presented to a convention of men assembled 
to draft a constitution. It had not occurred in our own 
country in the assembling of the Congress of the Revo- 
lution to provide for the common defence, or in the Con- 
vention for framing Articles of the Confederation, for the 
question was not then agitated in reference to such a 
union of the Colonies or States as would constitute a 
government. It did not occur in the formation of the 
Achean League, or in the Amphictyonic Council, 
in Greece; it did not occur in the government of 
Rome, when Rome was a republic or an empire; it 
has never occurred in negotiations for national alliances 
between sovereigns ; it was never agitated in the country 
in which we had our origin, and under the form of gov- 
ernment from which most of our ideas of government 
were derived — for England is essentially a monarchy ; it 
did not occur in the States which constituted the " em- 
pire" in Germany. In our country the idea was as new 
as it was great. It was, moreover, an idea too difficult 
to be grasped by the men of one generation, however 
wise they might be, or to be worked out in one genera- 
tion. It is the great idea which now, as new and mighty 
States are added to the Union, presents new difficulties, 
and, if ever to be permanently adjusted, it is to be ad- 
justed now. 

They arc States, properly, and in every sense of 
the term, sovereign, free, and independent, except 
that, as States, they have consented to surrender the 
powers necessary to constitute a general government. 
The power thus surrendered by the States, or by the 



51 

people (Constitution, Preamble, Amendment, Art. X), is 
the exact measure of the power of the General Govern- 
ment. The history of our country has not been a his- 
tory of a nation as such, or of a central government, 
like the government of England, always one, but a his- 
tory of separate Colonies, and then of separate States ; 
of the struggle of Colonies and then of States ; of Colo- 
nies which derived their charters and their rights at dif- 
ferent times, and on different conditions from the crown, 
of communities managing their own affairs, endowing 
their own institutions of learning and religion, making- 
laws to regulate their own domestic institutions, grant- 
ing titles to property. The Colonies constituting the 
original States of the Union were, in most of these 
respects, quite independent of the Crown, and wholly 
independent of each other. In very few of the laws and 
institutions of our country can the hand of the parent 
country be traced, even as advising or counselling a cer- 
tain course ; in no one of the original States was there 
an arrangement made at the suggestion of any other 
State, or modified by it. The great principle is to be 
maintained that the Union is a Union of "States," and 
that these facts in our early history are to extend ever 
onward in making our nation what it is to be. 

Those States have rights; rights which they have 
never surrendered ; rights which are secured to them by 
the Constitution ; rights which are not to be denied them ; 
rights of which they are not to be deprived by the mere 
exercise of power. It is not an assumption when they 
claim that those rights shall be respected ; it is not a 
matter of little or no importance whether they are re- 
spected or not. The entire framework of the Govern- 
ment proceeds on the supposition that they have rights ; 



52 

and great and valuable as are those powers which are 
deposited in the hands of the General Government, and 
essential as they are to the very idea of government, yet 
it may be affirmed that the rights of the States which 
have not been surrendered, but which have been re- 
served, are not less valuable or important. As we can 
form no correct conception of the Government of our 
country without a right understanding of the powers 
conferred on the National Government, in the Executive, 
Legislative, and the Judicial departments, so we can 
form no correct conception of the nature of our Govern- 
ment without a correct idea of the powers and rights 
belonging to the States. As our Government is not a 
mere confederation of independent States bound by 
treaty, and at liberty to dissolve the connection, so is it 
neither a great central power having no relation to the 
States, and at liberty to pursue its great purposes re- 
gardless of the States. The complex machine, recogniz- 
ing both, where the one is as vital and essential as the 
other, constitutes the idea of the Government of the 
United States under the Constitution. 

That these should come in collision is a matter which 
could be guarded against entirely by no human wisdom. 
So many, so important, and so neiv often are the questions 
involved and the interests at stake; so many points are 
there which could not be defined in the Constitution ; so 
vague and indistinct from the necessity of the case, is 
the boundary which divides the one from the other; so 
different are the judgments of men on questions so diffi- 
cult and so little defined, that it needs but a slight know- 
ledge of history or of human nature to see that they 
must come into collision. Our fathers saw the danger. 
They feared it. They did all, perhaps, that men could 



Do 



do to avert it. They defined as they could the lines of 
power, and the points of jurisdiction ; and then, with a 
wisdom almost above that of man, they instituted that 
great tribunal — the Supreme Court, to meet these varied 
questions, and to apply the principles of the Constitution 
to new questions as they should arise. We gloried in 
the arrangement. We gloried in the happy results, until 
all the framers of the Constitution had passed off the 
stage. Collision was suppressed. Local questions in- 
volving vast rights were decided, and a power went forth 
from that august tribunal which settled those questions ; 
which calmed down the passions of men; which repressed 
all thoughts of armed resistance. Great states like New 
York, in the monopoly granted by that State to vessels 
navigated by steam, saw their own laws set aside by an 
opinion from the lips of Marshall, and the avails of a 
great invention given to the world without a murmur. 
But who could have anticipated that one mind could 
have started questions which would move at once nearly 
half the States of the Union in one direction; which 
would make such an appeal to the States as to prepare 
them to combine in an armed resistance to the Govern- 
ment; which would so assert the doctrine of the rights 
of the States as to demand a separation from the Govern- 
ment itself? Who could have anticipated that a single 
subject — one, and which it was hoped would be checked 
and removed, slavery would become so gigantic as to de- 
mand the control of the entire Union, and to threaten or 
destroy the very Constitution which, while it sought to 
check and restrain it, had made it an important element 
in the Government, and made provisions for its perpetuity 
in the Constitution itself? These things were beyond 
human sagacity to anticipate, and hence this war. It 



54 

remains now to be seen whether it is beyond the wisdom 
•and the patriotism of the nation to prevent such collisions 
in future times. 

Is this sufficiently provided for in the Constitution ? 
Was it sufficiently understood what would be the condi- 
tion of a State if it should set up for independence, and 
should claim the right of " secession?" Could no new 
provisions be introduced into that instrument, beyond 
the power of the Supreme Court, to determine questions 
of that nature ; to meet such an emergency ; to provide 
against a claim; to make the course of the General 
Government at once plain and effectual ? Is it always to be 
left to a mere "construction," what is to be done in such 
an emergency; to a reliance on an argument as to what 
is necessary to be done ? Is it to be an open question — 
a question so ambiguous and uncertain whether force 
may be resorted to that there shall be room for the for- 
mation of a great and powerful party to embarrass the 
operations of Government ; to interpose the doctrine of 
State Rights as against all efforts to suppress a rebellion; 
to leave the matters of treason so undetermined as to 
make it almost impossible to convict a traitor ; to make 
attempts to resist the Government in an effort to suppress 
a rebellion as innocent and harmless as are ordinary po- 
litical questions ? Does not the melancholy history of 
the origin and progress of this rebellion make it impera- 
tive on the nation that the power to meet such an emer- 
gency shall be affirmed and denned; that power so vast 
as is needful to do it shall, while it shall be so denned as 
to save it from the appearance of mere arbitrary and 
constructive powers, be so distinctly conferred as to 
silence forever the entire doctrine of secession, and re- 
press forever all efforts to dissolve the Union by force ? 



00 

3. A more accurate definition of the nature and ex- 
tent of the military power as related to civil authority ; 
when, by whom, for how long a time, and to what ex- 
tent martial law may be proclaimed, regarded as neces- 
sary to the preservation of the peace. 

The great fundamental principles in our Government 
are (1) that it is not a military despotism, but is a 
Government of civil law, as contradistinguished from 
military; (2) that the powers of the Government shall 
be accurately defined ; and (3) that the military shall 
be subordinate to the civil power in all cases whatsoever, 
alike in war with foreign powers and in domestic insur- 
rection. The military power is to be called to the aid 
of the Government only when the civil processes are in- 
sufficient to preserve the peace, and the extent of the 
exercise of that power is to be only that which shall be 
necessary to preserve the peace or to restore it, and 
is to cease in all cases when peace shall be restored. 
This principle was one of the fundamental maxims in the 
ideas of Roman liberty — cedant arma togae. The liberties 
of a people can never be safe unless this is admitted. 

That, with this view, martial law may be proclaimed, 
cannot be denied, and the exercise of this power may 
be essential to the preservation of the peace of a com- 
munity. So far as the internal administration of the 
laws of a country is concerned, this is the only use of the 
military power, the only reason why such a power should 
exist at all. The moment that that power is resorted to 
to execute an unjust law, or to carry out the political 
views of those in power, or to control the free exercise 
of the people in the elective franchise, or to resist the 
execution of the decrees of the civil tribunals, that mo- 
ment liberty is gone and the Government is changed. 



5G 

Nothing now is more undefined and unrestrained than 
the exercise of that power. By whom martial law shall 
be proclaimed ; under what circumstances ; for how long 
a time; over what extent of territory, are all points un- 
defined in the Constitution, and, at present, are all left 
to the discretion of the Executive. Perhaps, also, in the 
laws which regulate nations — the common maxims which 
are understood to govern men — there is nothing so ma- 
terially affecting the liberties of mankind more unde- 
fined and unsettled than the exercise of this power. On 
a matter of so grave importance as this the liberties of a 
country should not be entrusted to those maxims and 
laws which have grown up among military men, and 
which constitute a military code, for those are not the 
laws under which constitutional liberty is secured; those 
are not the laws by which this nation is to be governed. 
Yet this power is a terrible power. Nothing is more 
arbitrary than military power; in nothing has the pro- 
gress of liberty been more marked among the nations 
than in the gradual substitution of the civil power — 
power defined by a constitution and regulated by law 
for the military. Government begins among barbarous 
nations by the exercise of military power ; liberty makes 
advances by restraining that power, and substituting 
civil laws in its place ; under the highest forms of civili- 
zation liberty exists only where the military is made 
toholly subordinate to the civil powers ; the perfection of 
government will be secured only when, by the intelligence 
of mankind, the justness of laws, and by the purity and 
moral force of their administration, the necessity of 
military power shall cease altogether. But that power, 
when exercised, by its very nature sets aside for the 
time all that liberty has secured : suspends the opera- 



tions of the civil laws ; closes the courts to the extent to 
which it claims jurisdiction; dispenses with the trial by 
jury; introduces new modes of trial; substitutes new 
rules of evidence and new methods of punishment ; ex- 
poses men to arbitrary arrests, and, if continued, would 
be an end of civil liberty altogether. 

Such a power is too mighty and too dangerous to be 
left merely to " construction," and to the operation of a 
code which has authority only as it has grown up under 
the laws of war, and has received the tacit consent of 
the nation. Under an arbitrary government ; under an 
avowed military despotism, it may be so left, for this is 
the very nature of such a government, but constitutional 
liberty requires other guarantees than are to be found in 
a code of martial law ; demands securities that its regu- 
lar administration shall not be invaded, impeded, or set 
aside, unless the circumstances in which it may be done 
are clearly defined, and unless the securities are ample 
that it shall be kept within proper limits, and shall not 
be perpetuated beyond the point when there shall be 
security for the exercise of the civil laws. 

Liberty has not been permanently periled in our 
country during this war by the proclamation of martial 
law, only because those who are in pow r er have desired 
and intended that the exercise of this power should have 
these limits, and because the people have had confidence 
that when the necessity should cease the ordinary laws 
would resume their operations. The security in the case 
has been solely in the character of the Chief Magistrate 
of the nation and of those associated with him, and in 
the intelligence and calm confidence of the people that 
the necessity for the exercise of that power would soon 
pass away, and that its exercise would cease. But what 



58 

is the security for this in the Constitution ? If the ex- 
ercise of that power is admitted at all, what is there in 
that instrument to limit it? What is there to define it? 
And what is the responsibility if the power is abused ? 
As it is not expressly conf en ed by the Constitution, and 
as it is admitted that there are occasions when it may 
be employed, what is now to determine the extent to 
which it may be resorted to but the will of the Execu- 
tive ? and what article of the Constitution is so violated 
by its exercise as to render an Executive liable to im- 
peachment who shall use it in a manner perilous to 
liberty ? 

4. A better security for the rights of individual citi- 
zens, and for personal liberty. 

The provision on this subject in the Constitution is 
the following : " The privilege of the writ of habeas cor- 
pus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of re- 
bellion or invasion the public safety may require it." 
Art. 1, Sec. 9, 2. 

The principle in this writ, commanding the person who 
shall be arrested to be brought before a proper tribunal, 
is to rescue one from arbitrary imprisonment, or continual 
imprisonment without trial; to secure a speedy trial when 
there is a charge of crime ; to restrain a government 
from arresting and punishing a citizen without a proper 
trial ; to restore to liberty one who has been arrested 
wrongfully and by arbitrary power ; to secure to all a 
trial by due course of law, as against the exercise of mere 
arbitrary power. 

The liberty of every citizen is involved in the princi- 
ple of this writ. It is the last result of all the efforts 
made in history for individual and personal freedom. 
All the struggles for liberty have terminated in this, and 



59 

this expresses and embodies all the progress which the 
world has made against tyranny and oppression. Eng- 
lish liberty was complete when the provisions of this writ 
were finally secured and settled in the time of Charles 
II, for at that moment the prerogatives of the crown 
were not inconsistent with the liberty of the subject. 
There is no liberty ; there can be no liberty ; there is no 
security for the rights of a citizen if a government may 
arbitrarily arrest any man ; may throw him into prison ; 
may keep him there; may deny him the right of a trial; 
may prevent the opportunity of a defence ; may detain 
him as long as it pleases, or discharge him at its pleas- 
ure ; may assume to itself all the power of the courts 
with none of the checks and safeguards in favor of 
justice ; may thus abolish all the processes of the civil 
tribunals, and assume to itself the entire power of the 
state with no guarantee against its abuse. 

The Constitution declares that this shall not be sus- 
pended except in the specified cases — " Rebellion" and 
" Invasion," and then only when " the public safety' shall 
require it. It is supposed, therefore, that there may be 
cases when the " safety" of the public shall demand that 
the ordinary process of law should for a time be arrested, 
and a more summary mode of proceeding be adopted. 
The usual forms and processes of law would be too dila- 
tory to meet the case. The danger is supposed to be 
imminent. A rebellion ; a sudden invasion, may demand 
that men suspected of aiding the rebellion, or of assist- 
ing an enemy invading a country, should be suddenly 
arrested ; should be imprisoned ; should be denied the 
customary privilege of bail ; should be so kept and de- 
tained for time being, that, whatever may be the fact of 
their guilt or innocence, the country may be sure that 



60 

they cannot render aid to rebels or to invading foes. 
Such a power is undoubtedly essential to security in 
times of rebellion or invasion ; and such a power is con- 
templated under all the forms of just and constitutional 
government. But the right to all this must be limited 
by the danger, and must cease when danger is over, and 
must be exercised with the utmost regard to the liberty 
of the citizen consistent with the " public safety." No 
political motive can justify its exercise ; no party pur- 
pose can properly enter into it ; no personal pique can 
for a moment be an element in the exercise of this 
dangerous power. Beyond the limits of "the public 
safety," this becomes one of the most terrific forms of 
tyranny ; when continued in any way, or exercised in 
any case w 7 here the " public safety" does not require it, 
it is, so far a violation of all the rights of citizenship, and 
all the principles of freedom. 

The Constitution has not determined by ivhom this 
may be done, nor who shall be the judge when " the 
public safety" demands that this writ shall be suspended, 
whether by the Executive, by Congress, by the head of 
the department of the Government, or by the Supreme 
Court. That point is, of course, not settled by any thing 
in the nature of the writ, nor have the principles of the 
common law determined it. To the exercise of that 
power there has been no such uniformity as to determine 
by whom it shall be done. The most important provision, 
therefore, known to just views of liberty; that which 
embodies all that has been the result of the struggles of 
centuries in behalf of personal freedom ; that which of 
all the pow r ers entrusted to a government is most liable to 
abuse ; that by which the most permanent wrong can be 
done to an individual citizen — a w T rong where the power 



61 

of redress is so small as, in almost all cases, to make it 
a hopeless matter; that in which the author of the 
wrong may escape punishment altogether, is left wholly 
undefined, and that, too, in respect to circumstances 
where there will be the most probability that it will be 
exercised for mere political motives ; for the purposes of 
a party ; from a spirit of private or personal revenge ; or 
from a desire to perpetuate power. 

This war has shown that more specific provisions are 
necessary for the protection of individual and personal 
liberty. That many such arrests as have occurred were 
proper, and were necessary at the time of the rebellion 
for " the public safety," no one can doubt ; that mistakes 
should occur, and that innocent persons should be ar- 
rested in some cases under any safeguards which may 
exist under the exercise of the power of suspending that 
writ, is perhaps unavoidable ; but that errors have been 
committed by the Government the best friends of the 
Government do not den} r ; that such arrests have been 
made, in such a manner, and to such an extent, as to 
suggest just cause of alarm, it would be as vain to deny. 
The security in the case has been, not any limitation in 
regard to the power ; not in any means of redress ; not 
in any compensation for the restraint of liberty; but 
solely in the character of the men in power, and their 
sincere purpose to maintain, in all respects, the best in- 
terests of the nation, for there is not the slightest 
evidence that any such arrests has been made from 
individual prejudice or malice, or from a desire to pro- 
mote the interests of a party, or for any mere political 
purpose whatever. But the facts have shown what such 
a power may he hereafter in other hands, and how slight, 
after all the struggles for freedom in the world, and in 



62 

the .supposed fact that the results of such struggles were 
embodied in our Constitution, are the securities for per- 
sonal liberty in times of rebellion, invasion or war. 

On this subject, Hallam well remarks: "There may, 
indeed, be times of pressing danger, when the conserv- 
ation of all demands the sacrifice of the legal rights of a 
few; there may be circumstances that not only justify, 
but all compel the temporary abandonment of legal forms. 
It has been usual for governments during an actual re- 
bellion to proclaim martial law, or the suspension of civil 
jurisdiction, and this anomaly, I must admit, is very far 
from being less indispensable at such unhappy seasons, 
where the ordinary mode of trial is by jury, than where 
the right of decision resides in the court. But it is of 
high importance to watch with extreme jealousy the 
disposition toward which most governments are prone to 
introduce too soon, to extend too far, to retain too long, 
so perilous a remedy. But it is an unhappy consequence 
of all deviation from the even course of law, that the 
forced acts of over-ruling necessity come to be distorted 
into precedents to serve the purposes of arbitrary power."* 

Beyond all question the just interests of liberty de- 
mand that there shall be a limitation of the exercise of 
that power. Such a power should be lodged in the 
hands of the Executive only under the most accurate 
specifications of the time, the manner, the extent, and 
the circumstances under which it may be exercised. 
But even with all possible safeguards, it may be a power 
too great to be entrusted to the hands of any one man ; 
and if there is any power in the Government the exer- 
cise of which demands the calm and deliberate action of 
Congress, of the immediate representatives of the peo- 

* Constitutional History of England. 



63 

pie, it is this power ; if a necessity should occur demand- 
ing the exercise of this power during the intervals of the 
sessions of Congress, the right of suspension by the Ex- 
ecutive should extend only to the time when the Con- 
gress could be convened, at the shortest period, to act 
upon it. 

5. A more accurate and just representation in Con- 
gress ; a rule of representation which shall be based on 
the census of the whole inhabitants of the country, and 
according to the actual population. The present pro- 
vision in the Constitution is that slaves, considered 
mainly as property, shall constitute a basis of represen- 
tation in Congress, in the proportion of three-fifths of 
their number. * The provision in the Constitution is not 
that those who are held in slavery, even to the extent 
of three-fifths of their number shall be represented in 
Congress, for in the Constitution they are not so far re- 
garded as persons as to have the rights of citizens, and 
of course a right to be represented in Congress. The 
representation is based on the idea of property ; to wit, 
that they are property, and that as property, there may 
be an additional representation in Congress from Slave 
States/)* This was one of the " compromises" of the 
Constitution, and the essential idea was, that in order to 
secure something like a just balance between the North 

* " Representation and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the seve- 
ral states which may be included within the Union, according to their respec- 
tive numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of 
free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and ex- 
cluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons." — Art. 1, \ 2, 3. 

f " It is only under the pretext that the laws have transformed the negroes 
into subjects of property, that a place is assigned them in the computation of 
numbers ; and it is admitted, that if the laws were to restore the rights which have 
been taken away, the negroes could no longer be refused an equal share of represen- 
tation with the other inhabitants." — Mr. Madison, in the Federalist, No. liv. 



- G4 

and the South, persons only should bo the basis of rep- 
resentation in the North ; persons and property, to wit, 
property in slaves, should be the basis of representation 
in the South. 

On every just principle this provision in the Constitu- 
tion should be abolished at once and forever. Even if 
slavery should be continued in any part of the Union, 
the existing clause would be, as it is now, unjust to the 
African race, and to that part of the Union where it 
should prevail; if slavery shall be abolished, by the 
States themselves, or by an amendment of the Constitu- 
tion, the clause, being unless, should no longer, even by 
an historic allusion, disgrace the only perfectly free 
Constitution in the world. It is time that such a provi- 
sion, so unequal, so unjust, so contrary to all proper 
notions of civilization, of Christianity and of liberty, so 
disgraceful to the nation heretofore, should be expunged 
forever. It was a sad day for our country when the 
principle was admitted into the Constitution ; it will be 
a glorious day for our country, for human rights, and for 
liberty, when it shall be affirmed that all the inhabi- 
tants of the land are to be represented in the General 
Government. 

What is demanded by all just principles of human 
rights, and in order to carry out the real doctrines implied 
in the very nature of our institutions, is, that representa- 
tion in the National Government shall be uniformly, at 
the North and the South, in all our country, on the basis 
of the population. 

Ours is a representative government. But what is 
that ? It is based on human beings — on persons, not on 
things, on chattels, on cattle. The essential idea in all 
just notions of representation is, that where, in all the 



65 

limits of the territory under the government, there is a 
human being, or one who has by nature the rights of a man, 
and who in anyway contributes to constitute the nation as 
such, in its existence or greatness, there shall be a suit- 
able recognition of that fact in the representation in the 
government; and that, in this respect, as he has by 
nature the rights of a man, and, as his life, liberty, and 
property may be affected by the government, he shall be 
regarded and treated as a human being — as part and 
parcel of the great confederation. 

As matters have been from the adoption of the Con- 
stitution, great injustice has been done to every part of 
the nation; gross injustice to ourselves in the eyes of 
the world. Under this arrangement the North has pro- 
claimed the principle to their southern brethren — a prin- 
ciple not recognized in relation to themselves — that 
property may be in part the basis of representation, and 
they concede to southern slaveholders what they claim, 
that their slaves shall be regarded as property, and this 
odious principle the nation has proclaimed abroad to the 
whole world ; — the North thus, with all its zeal for free- 
dom, with all its professed abhorrence of slavery, with 
all its deep convictions that the African is a man like 
other men, yet declaring its willingness that the only 
representation which there shall be of a human being 
when he is held as a slave — the only recognition of him 
in the halls of legislation — shall be as " property," and 
nothing else. Meantime, by a compromise unjust in 
principle, and unequal in its influence, the North has 
been all the while deriving an undue advantage from this 
arrangement. In order to counterbalance the "conces- 
sion to the Southern States" that their slaves might be 
represented in the proportion of three-fifths of their 



G6 

number as property, it was among the unhappy com- 
promises of the Constitution, that "direct taxes should 
be apportioned by the same rule as representation." 
And as the Confederation in 1783 had made it a rule in 
taxation that the direct taxes should be apportioned on 
the principle that three-fifths of the slave population was 
to be reckoned, it was deemed just that the same prin- 
ciple should be adopted in settling the number of repre- 
sentatives.* But since direct taxes under our Govern- 
ment occur at very distant intervals, and since the repre- 
sentation in Congress is constant, the North has been all 
the while reaping this advantage over the South, paying 
little in the way of the compensation, and yet constantly 
enjoying the advantage in Congress derived from the im- 
perfect and unequal representation in the South. 

In the mean time, the South has been suffering this 
wrong — that, as now constituted, two-fifths of the popu- 
lation, that is of what was before the war four millions of 
its population, have been without any representation: in 
other words, under the ratio of representation, there has 
been a loss to them of ten, fifteen, or twenty members 
of Congress. 

The true principle of representation would be, un- 
doubtedly, that no human beings should be represented 
as property; that the apportionment should be in accord- 
ance to the entire population as reported by the census 
tables ; that whatever may be the domestic relations of 
such persons, or whatever their condition, as sick or well, 
old or young, ignorant or learned, male or female, bond 
or free, white, copper-colored, black or semi-black, their 
existence as human beings — as a part of the nation — as 
having rights and interests as human beings to be pro- 

* Curtis's History of the Constitution. Vol. ii. pp. 48, 100. 



G7 

tected — should bo recognized in the government under 
which they live. In the carrying out of this principle, 
it is, of course, not necessary that all should be eligible 
to office ; nor that all should vote ; nor that all should 
be admitted as law-makers of the land. 

But if they are represented in Congress should they 
not be allowed to vote ? Is not the one connected with 
the other in all just ideas of liberty? Can liberty prop- 
erly exist unless this right be granted ? Is it not at the 
basis — a fundamental idea — in all our conceptions of 
freedom ? True, there may be limitations and qualifica- 
tions in regard to the right of suffrage, and such limit- 
ations and qualifications may be applied to those of 
African descent as well as those of Caucasian or Mon- 
golian descent : so far, and no farther. Even when the 
right is recognized on the largest scale, there are restric- 
tions in respect to sex, and age, and the time of residence 
in a country ; and in the same sense there should be in 
regard to those who have risen from the condition of 
bondage, and in no other. I believe that there should be 
restrictions as derived from property in voting, and that 
this should enter into the notion of suffrage ; but why 
more in regard to the colored man than the white man ? 
I would be willing, also, that the right to vote should be 
confined to those who can read and write ; but is there 
any reason why this restriction should be applied to a 
man of one race or complexion rather than another — to 
the descendant of Ham rather than of Japheth or Shem ? 
I believe, also, that, in the case of a foreigner, a much 
longer residence in our country, as a qualification for the 
elective franchise, should be required than is required now ; 
but why should this be demanded of the man created 
with a dark skin rather than any other ? Man is not 



08 

free until he may approach the ballot-box ; the slave is 
but half emancipated until in this respect he is placed on 
a level with other men. Our country will never be a 
land of equal rights while color makes a distinction in 
this respect between a man and his neighbor. 

6. The adoption by the requisite number of States 
of the amendment of the Constitution for the entire abo- 
lition of slavery in all the States of the Union, prohibit- 
ing it forever. 

That power is not conferred on the General Govern- 
ment now, whatever may be said of the right of the Gov- 
ernment to interfere with slavery in times of war, as a 
"military necessity;" whatever may be the effect in 
suppressing a rebellion, in this respect, when the armies 
of the nation enter a State where slavery prevails ; and 
whatever may be the power of the Government in re- 
spect to the Territories of the Union, yet, under the 
Constitution, no power is given to Congress by any acts 
of legislation to interfere with the subject of slavery in 
the States that compose the Union. In the Convention 
which formed the Constitution that was a matter which 
was supposed to belong to the States themselves, and it 
was left there. This fact has indeed placed us in an 
undesirable condition before the world ; for foreigners — 
foreign "philanthropists" — who have so much reproached 
us for the fact that slavery exists in our country, seem 
never to have understood the nature of our Constitution, 
and the relation of the Federal Government to the sub- 
ject of slavery. 

But there can be no doubt as to the power so to amend 
the Constitution itself as to prohibit slavery in all time 
to come. That such a provision might have been intro- 
duced into the Constitution by the Convention ; that the 



09 

States might have adopted this among the other provis- 
ions in the Constitution, there can be no reason to doubt. 
Some of the States might indeed, as perhaps some for a 
time would have done, have refused to adopt the Con- 
stitution with such a provision, but there can be no doubt 
that those who did adopt the Constitution might do it 
wUh such a provision, or with any other whatever. 
They entered the Union voluntarily; there was no 
power, as there was no disposition, to compel them. 
As it was, though the power to regulate the subject of 
slavery was not given to the General Government in the 
Constitution, yet the power to amend the Constitution, 
in all respects, except the two which I have before re- 
ferred to (Art. V), was given to the nation, and they 
became members of the Union under that Constitution, 
and with that understanding. In all respects, and for 
all purposes, and to the most unlimited extent to which 
any point could have been brought before the original 
Convention, and in any new exigency which may arise 
which could not have been foreseen by the Convention, it 
was provided that "the Congress, whenever two-thirds of 
both Houses shall deem it" necessary, shall propose 
amendments to this Constitution; or, on the application 
of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, 
shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, 
in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, 
as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legis- 
latures of three-fourths of the several States, or by con- 
ventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other 
mode of ratification may be proposed by Congress ; pro- 
vided, that no amendment which may be made prior to 
the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in 
any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the 



70 

ninth section of the first article ; and that no State, 
without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suf- 
frage in the Senate." It would be in the highest degree 
absurd to suppose that this power did not embrace a 
a modification of the Constitution on the whole subject 
of slavery, since, in order to show precisely how the 
power to amend was to be limited, the Constitution spe- 
cifies two things, and two only, where that power might 
not be exercised. Slavery in the States is not one of 
those things, and, therefore, it was left among those 
things which, while they might have been introduced into 
the Constitution by the Convention which framed it, 
might also be the subject of future arrangement. 

Moreover, the most ample security was provided that 
no wrong should be done to any of the States, or to any 
of their interests, by an amendment to the Constitution. 
Congress itself has no power to amend the Constitution. 
That power was regarded as too great and too dangerous 
to be entrusted to a body like that. The framers of our 
Constitution never adopted the principle which is under- 
stood to exist in the unwritten constitution of England, 
that " Parliament is omnipotent." Under that principle 
in the British constitution, and by the power of Parlia- 
ment, important changes have been made in the consti- 
tution ; even the rule of succession to the throne has 
been determined, and, as in the time of James II, the 
reigning family has been set aside, under the flimsy pre- 
text that the monarch had "abdicated," and that a 
foreign prince might be called to occupy the " vacant" 
throne. In our Constitution the most ample provision 
has been made to secure the rights of all. " Two-thirds" 
of both Houses of Congress are necessary to propose an 
amendment, and the approbation of the " Legislatures 



71 

of three-fourths of the several states/' or of "conven- 
tions in three-fourths thereof" is necessary to give it 
the force of an amendment. It was presumed that so 
great power might be safely entrusted there. It was 
presumed that the assent of two-thirds of both Houses 
of Congress could not be given to a measure that would 
be unjust to any part of the Union ; and it was presumed 
that even if this should occur, the calm judgment of the 
Legislatures of the nation would arrest the evil. 

It cannot be pretended that such a measure may not 
be proposed and adopted now, or that if adopted it 
would not be binding on all the States of the Union. 
The nation, in regard to the Constitution and to legisla- 
tion, is intact and undivided. The acts of Congress are 
acts of the nation. The adoption of an amendment to 
the Constitution now, by the constitutional provisions, 
would be the act of the nation. The nation is not di- 
vided. The stars and the stripes are what they have 
been. If a state in rebellion fails to secure its own proper 
representation in Congress; if it refuses to partake of 
its own rights in the halls of legislation, it cannot then 
"take advantage of its own wrong," nor can it by its act 
render nugatory and void the acts of the nation under 
the Constitution. To the consideration of any such 
amendment to the Constitution the way would be open 
to such a state as to the other states of the Union, and 
an amendment tvould be a part of the Constitution. 

This war has demonstrated to the world that there 
can now be no permanent peace in this nation until 
slavery shall be wholly removed by law. Waged as a re- 
sult of slavery; waged to defend slavery; waged with a 
purpose to lay the institution of slavery at the very 
foundation as a "corner-stone" of the Confederacy, the 



72 

termination of slavery only will terminate the causes of 
the war, and lay the foundation of permanent peace. 

Our history, under the Confederation, and now for 
eighty years under the Constitution, has shown that 
slavery has been, and is, almost the only cause of aliena- 
tion between the North and the South, and that but for 
this there never has been any insuperable reason why 
the North and the South should not live and act in har- 
mony. Indeed, on the entire surface of the globe there 
is no one country of such an extent, or of any very con- 
siderable extent, where there are so many causes for 
unity; so few for division. Of one language; one religion; 
one origin; one general character; — united by vast 
rivers, and by the advantages which each derives from 
the peculiar productions of the other; united in their 
history, and by all the sacred recollections of the re- 
membered war of Independence, there is every reason, 
in the nature of the case, why we should be one. Our 
fathers felt this; and hence our glorious Constitution 
was formed, and we should have been now with nothing 
necessarily producing alienation, collision, or war, had it 
not been for slavery. But the same causes which have 
now produced collision on this subject will produce it 
again; nor will it ever be possible to adjust our free 
institutions to the idea that slavery is to be perpetual in 
the land. That fact is now established ; it cannot be 
denied. The South knows it; the North affirms it; the 
world sees it. All attempts, therefore, to secure perma- 
nent peace except on the assumption that slavery is 
somehow to cease ultimately in the land, have been 
demonstrated by our past history to be vain. 

To such a consummation all things now tend. Partly 
by the Emancipation Proclamation; partly by the pro- 



73 

gress of our armies in the region of slavery ; partly by 
the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law; partly by the 
acts of the States themselves, things are tending to this 
result, but the result will not be fully reached until the 
people of the United States, by the power which it re- 
tained when they adopted the Constitution, shall pro- 
claim in a peaceful, but solemn manner, before the 
nations of the earth, that involuntary slavery, except for 
crime, shall no longer exist in any of the states or terri- 
tories that compose the American Union. 

Then, indeed, there will be peace. From the gloom 
of the past four years, therefore, we look forward now 
to a brighter clay, and the prospect of that brighter day 
should awaken thankfulness to God, and joy in the loss 
which we mourn. To that day we now look when we 
shall be indeed one nation — a nation under one Consti- 
tution, with one flag, and one Government; a nation 
respected by all the world, and feared by all the world ; 
a nation united in religion, in commerce, in arts, and 
in liberty; a nation banded together in efforts to 
spread Christianity, science, and liberty around the 
globe. 

As I shall never address you again on an occasion like 
this, may I be allowed to make a personal allusion. For 
more than thirty years in this place I have advocated 
these principles of liberty. I have not shunned to de- 
clare my sentiments on this subject ; my opposition to 
slavery in all its forms ; nvy desire of universal freedom. 
That I have never done it indiscreetly in so long a time 
may be, or may not be true, but I have not used ambigu- 
ous language. I have never uttered one word in defence 
of the system of slavery, nor of apology for the men in 
political life, in the pulpit, or in the churches, North or 



74 

South, who have defended it. I have never hesitated 
to speak plainly of the measures which the Congress of 
the nation has adopted to perpetuate the system — the 
laws and usages which seemed to me to be contrary to 
the spirit of Christianity and to liberty. I have done 
this when I have stood almost alone in the pulpit in this 
city as uttering these sentiments. I have done it in 
peril of my reputation, my influence, my place. I have 
not sought, indeed, to obtrude it upon the attention of 
my people, or to make it prominent in my ministry, but 
I have not avoided it when it came in my way ; when I 
thought that the fair exposition of the word of God de- 
manded the utterance of these sentiments. I look back 
now on this testimony which I have borne for more 
than thirty years with unmingled satisfaction, and with- 
out one feeling of regret. I see now that these things 
are to be accomplished. After so many years I look to 
that bright day when slavery shall be removed from the 
land, and with the hope that, before my head shall de- 
scend to its last resting-place, and ere my eyes shall be 
closed to look on my native land no more, I may see the 
last vestige of the system gone ; the last evidence in 
the Constitution that it ever existed in the nation re- 
moved : — that, even in my time, he who occupies the 
place of Jay, and Ellsworth, and Marshall, and Taney, 
yes, Taney, shall, in that high court, give utterance, as 
adapted to our regenerated land, to the language of Lord 
Mansfield, that the 'air of America is too pure for a 
slave to breathe.' 






S '12 






